Throughout Every Letter, Every Moment, I Love You More
by sctwilightvampwolfgal
Summary: Love comes in many forms, can be expressed in so many forms, and everyone tends to have their cues for how they express love. *Oneshot collection with a mixture of friendships, varying couples, and varying themes.* *Inspired by The Miraculous Challenges Forum and the ABC Challenge within it and written for Anne's second list.*
1. Amphibian

She bit back a half tempted squeal as she watched it climb over her arm, "This is so cool! Can we have him please? I think that he really likes me." Juleka's smile looked perfectly soft, and Rose bit her lip, considering quite what to tell her.

"Uh... Sure." She felt a little alarmed at the idea of taking care of a lizard of all things, but she found herself wanting to cherish the smile that lit up her girlfriend's face.

"Thank you, Rose, so much!" She gushed, "What should we name him? Bill?"  
An employee moved a little closer, "That's actually a girl lizard, young lady, you see that there?"

Juleka frowned in thought, "How about Rose?" She murmured, "After all, she's the most amazing girlfriend in the world."  
Rose squeaked, ignoring the look on the saleswoman's face of surprise, "U-Uh, sure."  
She still felt a little squeamish, but at least Juleka was happy; besides it was an honor to have their pet named after her, no matter how much her stomach bounced within her.

They bought the little lizard that day, and Rose had to remind herself to take deep breaths and smile, because she still felt a little nervous even though she shouldn't; the little lizard was certainly a nice little guy, er, girl after all.

* * *

Rose sighed as she dropped a small bug into the glass container that their little lizard called home and tried to bite off her nerves as she watched it dive for it and consume it with renewed vigor; her belly flopped, but she ignored it.

The little lizard looked almost cute when she came towards the glass and stared at her with a somewhat happy expression; it made her almost less squeamish watching the little fella.

"So what do lizards like other than bugs?" She attempted a bright smile, "Do they like belly rubs like doggies? Or may be they like to be petted like cats or chin scratches? Ooh, do you like chin scratches?" Rose didn't even realizing that she was cooing as she came closer to the glass aquarium.

"Okay," She chirped and pulled the little guy out, "Rose, do you like this?" She held the lizard carefully in her hands and tried to ignore how its little feet made her stomach fall to her feet inside of her; she gingerly started to pet from his head down to his tail and half curled her tail around her finger.

She beamed though the lizard didn't purr, didn't wag its tail, and she was starting to wonder if it even liked petting.

If Juleka came home from work more than a little surprised to find her girlfriend curled up on the couch with their lizard asleep on her chest and her hands looped casually over the pet lizard's sides, she didn't say much about it, just picked up the little lizard, put her back in the aquarium, and pulled a blanket over Rose.

Her soft smile was answer enough to how the cute moment settled in her stomach and made her so happy; may be one day, they'll have more than just a lizard.

She couldn't help but think of what it would be like to call Rose her wife and to see Rose playing with their adorable children, and her smile only grew as she pulled herself up on to the couch and cuddled Rose closer to her chest and fell asleep by her side, happier than anything that her girlfriend had let her buy a lizard regardless of how squirmish Rose had started out.

Juleka loved her more than anything.


	2. Buster

Alya had opened up a new part of the LadyBlog, held exclusively in favor of fans where they could submit theories such as who Cat Noir and Ladybug are to whether they are related, dating, friends, or whatever.

She'd spend time collecting short segments of theories and work on debunking them, becoming a true Myth Buster, as she'd later claim to make it sound much more intense than simply solving a theory and disproving it.  
Lately, she'd received more theories asking if Ladybug and Cat Noir could be certain people, one of which was whether Kagami Tsurugi could be Ladybug while another theory cropped up over whether Adrien Agreste could be Cat Noir.

Alya first went to prove that Kagami Tsurugi couldn't be Ladybug as she lived far away until recently and for another thing, she'd been Akumatized which happened days after Alya had first received the theory.

Even though her hair color was similar to Ladybug's, it didn't have nearly the same length, and she never wore it in pig tails for that matter.

She also had no well known talents for yo-yoing as she seemed to prefer fencing, and Ladybug did not seem to be a fencer from the way she battled; Kagami would probably make a better Cat Noir than Ladybug though Alya knew way better than to write that.

Alya definitely did not want to get any theories over whether Kagami was actually Cat Noir though it would be mind boggling if the Miraculous changed that much, from the gender to body type, hair color, eye color, and whatever else to make that work.

She shuddered at the thought, but happily went forward to debunk how Adrien Agreste was simply too busy and too reserved to be Cat Noir.

* * *

"So some people suspect that Adrien is Cat Noir." Alya was never quite the subtle sort and couldn't help her almost smug smile at mentioning this to her three best friends, "But even though they look a lot alike, Adrien certainly doesn't act all that much like him and obviously couldn't fit in superhero work in with all of his private tutors, school, and modeling in his life."

Alya half leaned on the table, pretty proud of herself though tired; Adrien's somewhat startled, somewhat nervous look missed her in the sight of her confidence.

"So people think that I could be Cat Noir?" Adrien looked concerned as he half leaned over the table.

"Yeah, but it's a little absurd." Alya admitted, "I used to think that you might be him, like how I used to think that Marinette could be Ladybug, but it's a little unfeasible now. Cat Noir and Ladybug going to our school and being some of my best friends? Impossible. I surely would have found evidence for it ages ago if that was the case." She shrugged.

Adrien looked just as surprised as Marinette was starting to look as they stared wide eyed at Alya.

"Uh, Alya, how are you going to disprove this theory this time?" Marinette looked slightly tired and a little concerned over her best friend's sake.

"Just follow Adrien around and ask him important questions which I obviously know the answer to, because he can't be Cat Noir. I'll try to find solid evidence linking him away from Cat Noir." Alya smiled slightly as she relaxed against the table.

* * *

It was downright frustrating!

Every day, hanging out with Adrien to the point that some people assumed that she'd dumped Nino for the chance to date the supermodel.

With each passing day, Alya was slowly but surely growing convinced that Adrien could be Cat Noir even though he punned even less than before; Cat Noir seemed to act over exaggerated to make up for it, and Alya was starting to go insane.

It made too much sense; Adrien would vanish, Cat Noir would show up.

Adrien may be busy, but he was pretty good at avoiding his bodyguard and secretary as well as anyone else that stood in his way whenever Akuma attacks happened with the weak excuse of, 'I was hiding' to 'Sorry, the Akuma caught me under his or her spell.'

Alya was about at her breaking point and ready to yell at him to just tell the truth already when she finally stumbled upon solid evidence.

Her hands shook, but her phone stayed down.

It felt like the suspenseful build up to a great climax in a movie, where suddenly realization dawns, and you watch stunned, transfixed, waiting for the next moment to properly unfold and capture the rest of the story.

That evening regardless, she went home typing up that Adrien Agreste couldn't be Cat Noir and posted a photoshopped picture of her own that she'd spent hours creating and making look as real as possible to show Cat Noir and Adrien Agreste near each other.

Due to Marinette's crush and the ease of finding Adrien Agreste pictures online, it wasn't hard to find a good one to alter and throw in with her large collection of Cat Noir ones.

She was determined to make it look as real as possible and since she had never lied on her blog before, she was positive that they'd believe the pretty real looking picture that she posted online.

Alya still felt as if her mind had stilled from that moment in the school hallway when she stopped dead in her tracks to watch Adrien Agreste transform into Cat Noir and even though he hadn't seen or heard her standing there, she was determined to keep her loyalty to best friends first over even her career as a reporter.

Sometimes you just had to trust that others kept secrets for reasons even you may not understand yet.


	3. Catastrophe

The world tumbles around them, and it feels almost like a novice mistake as buildings crumble, and suddenly he can't help but fall forward, not able to catch himself in time.

The Akuma dodged his attempt to knock them down a few pegs, dodged his means of cornering the Akuma with a distraction, and Cat Noir stood back as the world fell into despair around him.

Destruction rang clear down the Parisian streets, and Cat's stomach drops as he takes in the damage around him as if it's mess is something more than it is; it certainly feels that way when he sees a little girl lost in the wreckage, a little hurt, but not to worrying degrees.

Cat nearly stops helping stop the agile Akuma to start searching for the little girl's parents with thoughts of his own life with just a father, an often absentee one anyway, and he feels a little broken inside when he turns away from her search to locate Ladybug, who is standing a decent distance away, a frown on her face, and shifting her posture to a stiffer one.

It aches to think that for once, she may be reigning in her feelings for his sake, and he wonders just how much of that she'd seen, "Go, your timer's counting down." Her voice is tired like she can't quite find the energy to say the words, but Cat Noir follows her command without fail.

He can barely feed Plagg with shaking hands, his Kwami uncharacteristically silent, as he hears the little girl scream out for her mom and dad, and suddenly her screams shift to a shrill shriek, and Adrien breaks down, isn't quite able to breathe.

He ignores his Kwami's call and walks towards the little girl, all crouched down by a bloody hand, fingers limply twitching, and Adrien doesn't think, just lifts the fallen building off of the man before her, helping get him further out of the pile; his tongue feels heavy in his mouth when he tries to reassure her that her daddy will be fine.

Adrien's heart feels like a weapon in his chest, and he wonders if Ladybug can dimly tell who he is now from where he came from and how he reacts to the destruction; he can't even think to tell her that or otherwise.

His fingers shake, and it's horrifying to realize what he caused as he stands up on shaky legs, tongue so heavy now that it stopped, and starts digging through the rubble, faintly hearing Plagg's slightly louder calls for him, "Kid, Kid."

Every call feels like a dagger in his heart, too much of a reminder of the girl behind him, as he finally pulls her mother out of the rubble, less bloodied, but her heart is so faint in her chest that Adrien's heart feels like it's falling down, down below him in a sea of despair.

He stands shakily and returns the mother to her husband and her daughter, "L-Ladybug's got this taken care of. Everything will be okay."

Adrien feels broken, hollow, and can't even utter a kind word about his alter ego as he moves back towards the alley under Ladybug's call of his superhero name.

When he transforms and returns to her, his heart can barely feel relief to be by her side, but he pauses long enough to hear her, "That was kind of you. Thank you. It may have helped save their lives."

The 'may' will have to be enough for now, but Cat Noir is relieved that his Lady can see him at all despite how broken he's felt since the buildings fell around him.


	4. Doggie

Adrien blinks past his Cat Noir suit and just stares at Marinette before him, who's crouched down in front of a light brown coated dog, petting his head as if he were something worthy of a cat.

He's Cat Noir now as he looks on, but he feels the bristling of his skin and almost wants to shoo the dog though the smile on Marinette's face gives him pause.

"Do you think, Cat Noir, that my boyfriend will like our new dog?" She asked, and they're suddenly playing that age old game of pretending to not know who each other is behind the mask for the public eye's sake that they'd started shortly after revealing themselves to each other.

"Probably not. If you asked me, the best kinds of people, ones that deserve a lady like you, are cat people." He can't believe that he can speak clearly over his desire to hiss at the animal before him.

"Oh, do you think," She smiles as if she knows something that he does not, "That he'd be okay with three kids and a hamster one day. May be I'll buy him a cat as a wedding gift." She shrugs, and his heart does weird palpitations in his chest.

Suddenly, he can picture a quaint house as his mansion often feels too big and a little sewing room tucked into a cute, little corner somewhere, three kids to raise and love with all of the emotion that he can pour into them; they have to know how much he loves them. He imagines a little hamster in its cage, staring up at him from a little house, and suddenly he wants to lift the little creature, pet him, and cherish him like another kid.

"Y-Yeah," Cat Noir can't quite breathe past his racing heart and the lump in his throat, "I bet he'd love that."

Marinette smiles, all sunshine and adorableness, and she motions him closer, just to lean up and kiss his cheek: platonic for the public.

"Should I be the one calling the shots in our relationship?" She's asking out of curiosity, out of slyness, and Adrien can't help but imagine her on one knee and proposing.

It dazes his mind for perhaps a moment too long, "I-If you want."  
He lets the option remain open for her, but he's already imagining coming up with some grand proposal and lavishing her in love and attention.

Adrien wants to be the world for her, and he's willing to help take care of a little, brown dog for her sake.

"What should we name our dog?" Marinette's laughing, and truly, it does feel like they're in on a joke that the rest of the world is missing.

"Something cool." Cat Noir answers with a wave, knowing that as soon as he detransforms, he'll be back in front of her naming their new pup.


	5. Evanescence

The world opened up like a wall between him and the outside as he curled up tight in his bed, imagining that his mind was a one way stop, a place where memories floated away without reason, never to return again.

It hurt as he tried to grip on to the memories, tried to think of a woman with a smile brighter than sunshine, more beautiful than the moon; she was a guiding figure, a kindhearted role model.

His mind blanks, dragging away memories of his parents laughing and the occasional pun that sometimes slipped through, moments where formalities dragged away lighthearted, childlike fun, moments where his parents flirted and danced and smiled among rooms crowded with people dressed up in every rainbow of color in different styled, formal attire.

Adrien curls up tight, his mind flying at miles and miles of minutes, memories lost in the space that refused to yield inside his mind.

May be there needs to be a trigger memory, something to push his mind into remembering, so he reaches out for his own more recent memories; he thinks of Ladybug and all of her strength, her bravery, mainly pushed on by his own enthusiasm, his own strength.

He thinks of long patrol nights when a tired side of her shows, when she giggles and comes up with half attempted jokes, when she accidentally reveals something about herself; he thinks of how she denies his flirtations, how she pushes away from his puns, and yet how sometimes she returns, the words, the actions, in a cleverly tied bow.

Adrien smiles when he thinks of Ladybug, but his mind runs away again, because none of it reminded him of his mother, none of it brought to forth the blond haired, green eyed, model that he called, 'Mom.'

She's fading, and Adrien feels like weeping, because this is a different type of loss.

When she vanished, it wasn't like he forgot the yesterdays, the joys, the laughter, the love, and the support; he remembered it ten fold, thinking of every little thing.

Now though, she vanishes in a new way, a way that he refuses to let take hold; he thinks of distant memories, her attempts to help him bake cookies in the kitchen when he's about twelve or thirteen though they both fail miserably, they are smiling past the lumpy cookies, laughing, and even though they both got into trouble for sneaking into the kitchen when their private chef wasn't around.

The memory brings a soft smile to Adrien's face before he realizes he can't remember the words; did they even talk?

Why did they go to the kitchen to bake cookies and not just ask for help or have their chef make them some?

Adrien clutches his head past his head ache, and his mind is already spinning away, overanalyzing everything, and he can't stop it.

He bundles up in his blanket, trying to recall everything about her, but his mind blanks, drifts away, and Adrien cries harder past it.

It isn't right that he can't remember his mother correctly; it scares him.

He loves her, he really does, and yet he can't even recall the exact sound of her voice or the joy that lit up her face or what her favorite pose was to model.

All of it fled his mind like it didn't even belong.


	6. Frivolous

She stands out like a sparkling gem on a wedding band, and Gabriel suddenly feels more out of place than ever before.

While he's wearing a worn down, hand-me-down suit for the occasion as money's more than a little tight lately and materials for a full bodied suit cost more than he could even dream to afford, she's wearing a bright green gown, not bright enough to hit gaudy neon green for this event, just enough that she practically sparkles in the light and that her eyes come alive.

Her blond hair has been tugged away from her face, away from its normally straight layers and falls in gentle curls around her shoulder.

Gabriel is lost in her even though he carries the words that everyone's spoken to him far past their desired age, even if he knows better.

An event like this is hard to get into, so he turns away from what appears to him almost like a goddess in human form and finds his feet carrying him over to a notable designer as he clutches his designs in his notebook tightly as if his iron grip will keep it alive and well by sheer force alone.

He catches his attention by sheer luck or perhaps by the way his worn suit awkwardly falls down his frame and how nerdy he must look with his design book held in his hand; he doesn't belong at an event quite like this, is all that he can think.

Gabriel isn't necessarily broke and starving on the street, and he came from a fairly normal, middle class home; his parents encouraged his dreams but very few others saw them as notable.

He'd lived with few friends and mostly family to keep him company, but he wasn't the sort to not pay attention when he could as his inspiration often came from the people and things around him.

Gabriel loves to design and likes most of his designs by consequence, and he can tell with a self trained eye whether a design of his is lacking in some way or not up to the standards that he sets for himself, but sometimes he can't find a way to better that design, rise up above the other designs.

He speaks to designers all night, looking for a way in, and suddenly, she's there; her family is not of designers, but they are more than affluent.

She's a woman of upper class and while that doesn't matter much nowadays as far as Gabriel's aware, she clearly isn't the sort that he could even dream of being with.

Her smile is like the sun peeking out of the clouds in the dreary room, and when she offers for him to dance with her, he can barely say, 'yes.'

She tugs him onto the dance floor with such strength of will that a part of his heart is already going out to her.

While Gabriel dances with her, he considers her for all that she is and wonders what she sees in these parties.

"Are you a designer?" Her voice is soft and gentle, almost like a caress to his ears, and he can't help but wonder her view of those that make the pretty dresses that she wears.

"I am." Gabriel refuses for a moment to deny his hopes and his aspirations, because surely they matter more than anything else to share if he wants to succeed.

"I bet you're a good one." She smiles, "Some of the designers are stuffy in their old age. Don't become like them." She leans slightly back though it is not to run away.

Gabriel admires her, sees the effortlessness of a model in her, and just wonders for a moment.

"Do you want to see my designs later?" His question is nervous, and suddenly he feels like a thirteen year old with a crush on the prettiest high school girl, knowing that he looks awkward by default and surely not enough to catch her eye.

"Certainly." Her smile is genuine and contagious; Gabriel wants to reach out and hold her, less of a strict dancing pose, and more of an embrace. He doesn't though, because he can't imagine that that is what she'll want in this room that lacks the right kind of color to draw your eye until you find her.

She's the lighthouse in the room, drawing sailors' much needed attention, promising a sort of serenity that no one quite expects.

Gabriel decides past the frivolous nature of the party that he's much happier here, dancing with a woman that he barely knows, and yet always admires rather than sharing his designs with older fashion designers.

There's something assuring about her eyes and perhaps he isn't too surprised when later, she helps him build up his business with a sort of renewed vigor that he's always longed to see.

It's more than he can hope to know that a woman like her exists out there.


	7. Gregarious

Fields blossom and bloom around nature, dancing across the gentle blow of the wind, delicately scraping feet that walk over them barefoot.

Perhaps that's why she walks among the flowers, staring at vibrant green clovers that fade to bright, bright yellow flowers; they remind her of luck, of bright, bright joy.

It's what inevitably makes the woman pause; nature is beautiful and sometimes nearly precise.

That fact that a lot of the yellow flowers nearly are on top of each other as if tempting to lay claim to the most sun possible while the clovers just cluster close like wolf kits needing to be warm and together.

The woman pauses or rather remains paused as she takes it all in like her parents before her; they'd came here for peace of mind, to talk of dreams that lit the flowers up tall, and they'd came here to steal a kiss or two away from the bright city lights, away from prying eyes.

Nature had a way of keeping privacy, so she sits down in clovers, clustered around her like anxious kits ready to hear her story, so she indulges them.

"So bright flowers and lucky clovers," She giggles past her words as if they somehow amuse her as her companion nervously walks over to her like he doesn't belong though he looks nearly as bright as the flowers beside her, eyes as green as clovers are lucky.

She stares around them, gingerly taking the boy's hands, and the flowers preen to get closer, to catch her eye just as well as his fingers intertwine around her own.

The young woman takes a deep breath, "Maman and Papa told me about this place, how the flowers feel as vibrant with life as we are. They said it was magical, and it's where they first fell in love and to only bring someone here that I'd lay down my life for." Her preamble is delicate, and they lean forward towards it under the delicate brushing of wind that ruffles the woman's hair and stirs petals upon the air.

She leans back, almost delicately falling upon the clovers like that was where she belongs; the yellow flowers not far away beg for her man as that is obviously who he is to step into them and mold into their soft petals.

He doesn't listen, still sitting cross legged in the clovers like he uncomfortably doesn't belong.

The woman smiles, "I finally found that man after years." She breathes. "He's like the bright sun to my setting sun, and I think I love all of him more than I've ever known I could."

Her voice is delicate, nearly reverent, and the flowers rejoice around her.

"He's my hero." There's something in the downturn of her head then, something that conveys everything that she never knew she wanted, something that makes the wind want to pause and listen, makes the flowers still.

She begins with a few more false starts like telling a story to a child, but not yet aware of where to begin, "He's silly that's for sure."

The flowers want to laugh when they hear the amusement in her tone, and she smiles down at them as if she can just tell.

"I'm, as my Kwami tells me, full of luck." She looks forward, "And I've never really known that further than when I met my black cat."  
Suddenly, it's like the flowers understand why he feels so left out, here outside of Paris, and why suddenly they feel he belongs with them than with the silent clovers.

"I don't know if magic remains in this field, but it feels like it does." She finally says as if she can't take the silence anymore.

The man beside her shifted, finally claiming her other side, and the bright flowers make him shine in the sunlight, pale blond hair, not pale enough to miss the embrace of light dances and stands out in the yellow flowers that are at least a few shades darker, and his green eyes peek out from stems within the den of yellow flowers.

"This is more comfortable." Are the first words out of his mouth, and the flowers titter excitedly.

She laughs and shakes her head at him, "Sometimes I think magic is mostly in the little things, like nature, so vast and yet so full of life." She shrugs with a vibrant smile and gingerly lays a finger over the petals of one of the flowers, savoring the soft texture beneath her fingers.

"Only for the very best." She teases the man, and the flowers feel pride at that; certainly, she and this man are the very best, so like and yet unlike the two that had came by years and years before.

She shifts to find a comfortable stance on the clovers, blinking when she picks a four leaf clover out of the ground by her ankle; she holds it delicately like a relic of her past and smoothly puts it in her man's hair, right by his ear, so that it will remain steady.

It's so like the big, burly man that put a yellow flower in his lady's hair, bright yellow against dark blue.

The flowers feel pride and joy at the memory and the realization that the clovers finally had their moment to shine as well.

"You need the luck more than I do." She shrugs, like she's spent years analyzing this, and the flowers look on in surprised joy, "My black cat makes me the luckiest woman in the world. I had to show him the field that my parents fell in love at."

The flowers are grateful for her memory, for that knowledge, so they gingerly lean towards the man with the help of the wind to tease his sides, to make him smile, and to nearly make him laugh.

The way that the woman stares at him, makes them realize that she loves him more than anything, and she shifts to reflect, "He's saved me so many times already and in so many ways. You know nature was there and helped me fall for him the first time?" She shrugs, and the flowers want to know if it was their influence or the beautiful power of nature that was there.

They doubt they'll ever know, but they have the strongest feeling that everything about her memory is obviously beautiful and not quite as cliche as they'd imagine.

"I fell for him twice before we knew." She laughs like the dew that suddenly brushes leaves come the morning and soft petals made wet and slightly hunkered down under the dew fall.

They love the sound of it.

"Once we knew it made sense. I guess you can say that ladybugs need their black cats, the balance, and the love of it all." She smiles before she gets up to grab a basket still beside her, and they realize that the story is over.

They cherish these humans as if the story never ended, because for them, the mystique and the allure of their romance hadn't quite ended yet.


	8. Highway

Highways ran like new beginnings often did, and so it rang out as no surprise that they'd remember the highway just as easily as if they belonged there.

For Adrien, it feels like the first time that they'd really talked without an Akuma present, and he dreams of watching her blue eyes light up just like he did when they walked down the street, closer to the Eiffel Tower, before pausing and just talking.

It felt like a sudden surprise when she accidentally let it slip that she was a fashion designer or at least designed most of her clothes and hoped to make it her career one day.

For once, he hadn't used that information as a means to find her identity, still respected her wishes too much to go against them even though he had been a civilian when the information came to.

The next time they met was on a highway just outside of Paris after Adrien had detransformed and was currently stuck quite a walking distance from Paris with no quick way back home.

Even though he always tried to remember to stock up on Camembert for Plagg, he'd forgotten earlier that morning before an Akuma dragged him and Ladybug miles out of Paris.

"Hey," Ladybug dropped down on the side of the highway, using a rogue street sign to swing her yoyo on and make a safe landing, "Do you need a ride?"

It definitely feels different to step into her steady and warm embrace then climb into some stranger's car, and he thinks that perhaps this is truly the best way to travel, not with his baton as Cat Noir, not by a car that his chauffeur drives, and definitely not by walking.

He feels steady and strong warmth from her side, and he's soothed; he curses his inability to remember to bring the fabric that he'd bought her a week or so back.

Somehow that seems more alarming to forget than Camembert for Plagg at this particular point in time.

By the time that they are arriving back in Paris, they're laughing over some jokes that Ladybug has told and remembered though Adrien's half positive that he's heard some of them before.

He asks if she still has time to wait while he grabs something, and when she says that she can spare a moment or two, he all but rushes up the stairs in a hurry to grab the fabric, careful not to harm it, and races back to her side.

She accepts his gift with a grateful blush though he's unsurprised, really, the next time when he sees her on the high way, late to a patrol that Cat Noir was late to as well, and he barely catches her attention as Adrien, having slipped past his chauffeur to end up here with her.

Ladybug pauses to give him a look and then properly scolds him on how much money he spent on her when she surely didn't deserve it.

"You're a hero of Paris, Ladybug. You deserve the world and more for what you do." Sure, his face went bright red as he found the words, but the way her face lit up, both by her wide smile and a delicate blush, made him feel more than just butterflies in his stomach.

He'd later on claim something with a little more force to be behind the happy, dancing nerves in his belly, may be kittens playing with yarn with their sharp claws and happy teeth.

Adrien will try to remember that metaphor next time, because it fills his heart up with a sort of glee as it races beneath the surface.

He, of course, races to patrol long after she turned her back with a flirtatious smile and an apology, hopefully, she'll know one day that he was already on his way before.

* * *

Adrien remembers the first time that he sees that fabric again with a little shift in his heart, and Marinette's wearing it in a cute, light blue dress, and she's somehow spent time knitting a scarf and making a coat to go with them.

It's absolutely adorable on her, and he should really know that other people could have easily bought that fabric as well yet somehow he's almost positive that he'd gifted it to her.

The material wasn't cheap nor was it sold where she lived, and he had a feeling that she hadn't spent up all of her fabric money to buy it; he was only more sold on that fact when Marinette admitted that the material was a gift, just not from whom.

He's pretty sure that she lights up the highway when they all walk on the sidewalk later on, and he can't quite find the words to compliment her even though they should be easy to come by.

* * *

Adrien remembers when she drops down from a low vantage point near the Eiffel Tower, how she barely finds a place to hide and detransform.

He doesn't say anything as Cat Noir as he drops down in front of her, just in case someone were to look into the mouth of the alley that she's in and see her.

Cat Noir drops his transformation with a kind of steady ease that leads to her clutching him close and berating him for potentially revealing himself on purpose to any Parisian bystanders nearby.

He vows that her identity is more important than his, and he's grateful that the days of Ladybug and Adrien, of just Ladybug and Cat Noir, have faded to Adrien and Marinette.

Adrien loves walking beside her more than he perhaps loved any other form of travel as her hand feels warm in his own, and her body huddled close to his makes his heart race like nothing else.

The sidewalks beside highways are made better for the person walking next to rather than the solitude of moving alone.

May be one day, he'll find the words to ask for a kiss from Marinette as whatever they were before has been dumped on its head, and suddenly they are something much more, where no one stammers, and yet they feel so comfortable and at peace.


	9. Ice Cream

She giggled as she playfully swiped at the vanilla ice cream on her nose and leaned closer to Adrien, "So you're looking a little undecorated."  
Rose pressed a tender hand to Adrien's face, playfully swiping his chocolate ice cream over his cheek as she giggled when he playfully rolled his eyes at her.

Adrien shook his hand with such a pleasant smirk on his face that Rose's insides squirmed with eager caterpillars.

He shook his head, "You know when your girlfriend kindly gets ice cream all over your face, she has to kiss it off?"  
Rose laughed harder and pressed closer to gingerly kiss Adrien's cheek, tongue playfully licking it like a newborn kitten just to tickle his cheek and make him laugh that sound that she so adored.

Adrien squirmed away under her little, pink tongue, "Rose!" He shrieked, ignoring the befuddled expressions on the other patrons' faces as they watched the model and his super cute, super playful girlfriend.

She followed his movements almost lazily, still pretending to be part cat, as he shook to get away from her, only pausing when her vanilla ice cream fell into his chocolate ice cream's bowl.

"Oh," Rose murmured as if it finally sank in that she wasn't holding her cone nearly tight enough, "Now, we have to share it."

She shrugged with a pleasant, little smile, and he can't help but love the happy expression on her face.

It was okay that their ice cream mixed together, because it made her so pleasantly happy even past the playfulness from before.

Adrien scooted his chair closer and grabbed a napkin to wipe the last of his ice cream off of his cheek, uncaring about whether they had an audience or not, because he loved every second that he got to spend with his bubbly girlfriend.

Rose grabbed Adrien's spoon and took a small spoonful of mostly chocolate ice cream, giggling when she could taste the sweet taste on her tongue.

Adrien smiled at her, not at all even considering complaining that his girlfriend was eating his ice cream now, as he held his hand out for the spoon, and Rose placed it in his hand.

He gingerly took a scoop of mostly vanilla that was falling out of her cone onto his chocolate ice cream and decided that perhaps it was sweeter to enjoy her ice cream after her than his own initial flavor of ice cream.

His green eyes shone giddily, and he hoped that they could do this again soon.


	10. Justice

It should feel like the sweet relief of victory, of justice, but to Cat Noir, watching them pile the once supervillain into a cop car feels like hammering the final nail on the coffin of his heart.

He puts on his most confident look, doesn't forget a bit of his Cat swagger, a bit of his model swagger, but it feels staged, and he definitely knows that he isn't imagining the tension on Ladybug's shoulder as she can read Cat Noir like a book after all of this time.

She isn't the only one, because he knows her more than he's ever gotten a chance to know anyone before; he truly loves her, but some days, he wonders if it's romantic love that courses through his veins for her.

His love for her is so much sturdier than the romance in some of the books he's read for school or for fun, and he can tell you for one thing that his feelings run much stronger than Romeo's feelings for Juliet.

Adrien loves her in the way that he knows all of her mannerisms, loves her in the way that he knows for a fact that she's agitated by how she shifts, and how she trembles just light enough that you'll really have to look for it, like her agitations beneath the surface, filling her up to the brim, and needs a sudden relief.

He can read those emotions simply by her stance, can read the grit of determination by the curve of her 'emotionless' frown, because while the world sees a blank face on a confident, nameless girl, he sees a woman that will be strong for she needs to be.

Cat Noir shifts and watches finally as they drag his father away as if he's in an alternate world, and it isn't a cop car his father is in, but an old carriage with a horse pulling him like a victim during the Inquisition.

It aches, and it burns, but his words don't leave him; he doesn't stay to answer the press long after his father is wheeled away by the police officers that hounded the scene just three hours before they finally caught the villain, untransformed.

Cat Noir holds the brooch and pretends that he doesn't realize how all of this must seem to Nooroo; it must seem to him, the way it seems to Adrien.

He imagines that the Kwami feels lost in the way that Adrien is lost, feels broken in the way that Adrien feels beaten down, feels confused in the way that Adrien still can't figure out what changed and how this became the way that it is.

Adrien understands that much, like he understands how defeated Nooroo must have felt when finally Hawkmoth called his transformation off, ready to go home or rather behind bars, because they all knew that he would as soon as he detransformed, all knew that he would as soon as he was pushed to leave.

Cat Noir follows Ladybug to an abandoned alleyway as everyone else is within the commotion, everyone else is trying to figure out how the fashion icon could do this, but they can't even imagine the pain that clings to his son, a hero of Paris.

"What's up?" There's something about the exhaustion that clings to Ladybug's eyes and refuses to fade that makes Adrien stop short, sarcastic, cold reply dying on his tongue before he could even think to breathe or even speak the words.

"You have to know." Cat Noir shifts and while he's an adult now, this still feels like an end to everything that he'd called home before, and he doesn't quite know what to do, "Plagg, claws in."

To his relief, she doesn't gasp or freak out, just takes him into her arms as if he were her baby or her child and needed to be swaddled up in as much human warmth as possible.

Adrien melts into her embrace, too tired to resist, too worn to care about the rest of the world, only Ladybug matters in this moment, "I'm sorry even though you don't want my apology. I'll be here for you. Adrien, stay at my place for a while while this settles. I don't want the paparazzi to make this any worse than it has to be."

"Ladybug." Her name is a murmured plea on his lips, and so she holds him tighter before calling off her own transformation.

"Tikki, spots off." She holds him tighter if possible into her embrace afterward, and he knows her well enough to realize that she isn't trying to hide her identity from him, but rather give him as much comfort as her small body can give.

"I have to see." He knows that she understands his gentle request, knows that it isn't a command, and she backs up just enough for him to stare into a familiar face.

"It had to be you." He murmurs like it's a final proclamation of some great joy that he's never realized before.

He tightens his grasp on her and clings to her for the warmth and love that she so readily supplies.

Adrien only pulls back, startled, when he hears his phone go off in his pocket, and he picks up his friend's worried call in understanding.

"I called as soon as we heard, dude." Nino opens with, not even a 'hello' or 'hey' to start off with.

Adrien smiles, because it sends a sudden rush of cool waves of relief over his stomach and heart as he realizes how deeply another one of his friends care.

"Thank you." It's soft, but it's all that Adrien can say as Marinette tugs him close, back into her arms; his back is to her chest, but the relief and comfort spills forth just like before, and he relaxes completely.

"So where are you?" Nino asked as if it was all that mattered in the world right now.

"I'm with Marinette, just outside of where they arrested him, outside of the paparazzi's sight." Somehow he can't quite say the words that make the full picture fall into place, and Adrien doesn't force them; he's scared of the break that's waiting around the corner, the moment where everything completely sinks in, and he can't pick up the pieces anymore.

"Okay, Alya and I are on our way. How did Mari get to you so quick?" Nino can't help but ask, curiosity peeking through.

"She was here already. She saw everything that happened." Adrien can barely speak, but then her arms are soothing his shoulders with gentle massages, and he feels a part of himself let go to join the relaxing muscles.

He loves her so much more than a fairy tale, and he can barely speak past the lump in his throat that has nothing to do with his father, an awe of her deep understanding, but he knows that despite the distraction and all of the comfort that it will still have a large crash that will hit him all at once with the realization.

"I'm glad that she's already there, dude." Nino took a deep breath, "I'm sorry, man, especially since he was your old man, and I know that Mari used to look up to his designs or something. I'm sorry."

Adrien's thankful for such a great friend especially since he and Alya run into their alley, and don't even pause to get a great scoop from the reporters near where Gabriel Agreste was arrested earlier.

Nino squeezes Adrien in a hug as soon as Marinette lets go of him, so that he could; it's tight, nearly suffocating, but it feels like the brand of home that only best friends can bring with them wherever.

"Thank you." Adrien says again, because he means it, and he doubts that he'll ever go tired of saying it after all of this, all of the support that his friends give out unconditionally.

Nino smiles back at him with teary eyes, and Adrien feels the slight pressure of relief even as his best friend pulls away.

Alya rushes him in the next big moment, "I hope that you guys know that you mean more to me than some silly, old scoop, no matter how big, it is."

Adrien steadies himself in her embrace, so full of life and energy, and it's all of the support that he needs from his other close friend, and perhaps this is the home that he's always chased, the four of them together, strong against the world.

He breaks down crying at their support, at their love, though shock still keeps his father's arrest a distant, confusing thought that won't reveal itself fully to him.

When Alya lets go, Adrien feels Marinette's arms steady right above his stomach and yet below his heart, in the middle ground where chest fades to stomach and stomach fades to chest.

It's remarkably soothing in a way that he can't quite believe, and he hopes that justice is more than however broken he feels right now and that it's more than some law breaker meeting the end of a life of crime.

It has to be or Adrien doesn't think that he can make it.


	11. Kaleidoscope

Colors swirl around and blend, bleeding out into the entirety of the room, encompassing everyone within.

She stands out like a small beacon of light, golden tinted, lighter blond hair, bright blue eyes with swirls of emotion and the world wrapped up within them.

The woman is beautiful even under the myriad of colors peeking out from everywhere though when her breath comes out in a low mumble as if she's trying to find the words that won't tilt the world completely off of its axis.

She doesn't say much else for a while, just pushes through the crowd, past a girl that is just as bright, rainbow streaked hair, and features pulled into a comforting, warm embrace of emotion.

Everything appears a little tilted, a little sideways, but there's something about the strength of those that stand in this empty, left barely open space.

The blond comes back into motion and as we peek in to grasp exactly what this tilted, multicolored world contains, she shifts as if she's the newly emerging butterfly from its cocoon haven, but despite the shift, she isn't the butterfly that you'd expect.

She lights up with light that trails from head to toe, and amongst the gasps within the room, she becomes Queen Bee.

Queen Bee always stands with a strength that speaks volumes, and it is of no exception that she'll rise up among any animosity.

She gathers the class together as if remembering distantly that they are before her, and it is almost reminiscent of a bee and her hive; she nudges two others out of the fray with a nervous and frantic, "Just go!"

The colors shift as our focus is drawn into the two vanishing people, civilians, that should know better than to vanish when an Akuma's pressure holds them down; the one is a young woman, a girl in Lycee, and her hair is dark blue, but under the rainbow tint, it appears a blackish green alteration.

No one breathes a word when she gets lost in the spell of transforming, in becoming something a little more, and no one can bother to breathe a word when the boy beside her, tinted a nice green-gold hue that disperses almost entirely evenly across his hair, says a few magic words as well.

When Ladybug and Cat Noir find themselves back beside Queen Bee, it is to a quiet class that doesn't question a thing, and they let two other students leave right after their return.

It's almost of no surprise or unknown circumstance that the red haired woman that's hair glows a purple, gold tone in the lighting, and where she runs, the Kaleidoscope twists, making her appear sideways.

She mutters a few words, and the transformation takes over with a flash of orange light that temporarily blinds those looking in.

The bespectacled boy beside her utters words right beside her, and when green light overtakes the Kaleidoscope, Carapace is left beside Rena Rouge.

The class seems beyond it's ability to grasp the situation, beyond it's ability to comprehend everything that's happened in the past few moments, and yet there's already a call of Lucky Charm, and a little bit of quick thinking when a pair of pliers falls into Ladybug's hands.

No one can say a word, too busy focusing on the commands, the plans laid before them, and so they rush to follow Ladybug's lead, their class president is as much their leader as she ever was.

* * *

When Ladybug, Cat Noir, Carapace, Rena Rouge, and Queen Bee have help in defeating Kaleidolusion, not a single bystander bothers asking why.

The heroes move quick and seem too frustrated to be able to properly call the civilians off, and no one says a word when Miss Bustier charges the Akuma and provides the kind of distraction that Ladybug needs to latch on to the Kaleidoscope that previously trapped her with a strong tug of her yoyo, breaking it over her knee in the span of a few, quiet heartbeats.

She purifies it with a professionalism that no one questions before she slips away to keep her secret identity kept from those that hadn't realized it before now.


	12. Luminescence

Soft gold danced through her hair as she held herself, tall and proud; Chloe held herself like a queen as if everyone is entitled to give her the upmost respect.

Her blond locks fell down around her shoulders, and she became ethereal under the golden glow of the soft lights above.

His breath left him in microscopic waves as he traced with the softest pencil strokes her hair on to the page, capturing what looked so soft as if he could simply melt into the page and run his fingers along it, feel the softest strands, much softer than a warm cocoon of a blanket, much softer than a pillow that cushions his head just right when he sleeps.

Nathanael had never considered himself to be easily won over by appearances that strike the heart angelically as he's always tried to see so much more than illusions; he's always seen her sneer from miles away and yet that does nothing to the image before him.

She'd made demands that if she was to stand here and be his muse than she'd need strawberry candles setting the tone and atmosphere; she needed to be relaxed by the best if she were to stand and look gorgeous for him and not be paid.

Chloe had also insisted that the room could be neither too hot nor too cold, and she had have regular breaks if her legs began to feel even a little tired or achey.

Nathanael paused, pencil held delicately in his hand, half feeling as if it will slip if he moves just so, and he pauses to admire her, trace this into his memory before he tries to capture the lazy shine in her eyes.

Chloe just looks so beautiful like this, she appears almost harmless, and Nathanael wishes that she'd always appear so gentle, so mild mannered, though he would like her spunk if it wasn't as rude as she often presents herself.

He carefully traces her eyes on to the page, capturing the soft glow of them, the lazy kindness within them as if she could be anywhere, as if she was relaxed enjoying an evening curled up by a fire wearing her most comfortable clothes, and with no intention to leave for at least hours on end.

She looked nice under the glow of the whole room and the natural glow that seemed to emit off of her, and he wanted to capture every last detail of a moment that wasn't as intimate as it surely felt.

They were in an old classroom that had barely been used in recent years, not her house, and they surely weren't in any way behaving or dressed as if they were alone.

Chloe was dressed as she always was though his mind could picture her easily in a bathrobe with how perfectly comfortable and at ease that she appeared: a blue one might match her eyes.

He doesn't draw it, and it isn't even as sexual as one might expect; there's just something private about her expression that cements an image that doesn't cross the border into naughty territory in his mind.

Nathanael sees it as easily as if he were looking at a sister or a wife or his mother; he doesn't see it in the way that he's sure that she'd assume if he spoke his thoughts out loud.

Once he finishes her eyes and has a rough outline of her figure, her body perched up on that desk, he tells her that she can take a break.

"You did catch my best side, right?" She hops down to join him at peering at his still incomplete drawing, "You've mostly just caught my eyes and my hair. Why?"  
It's almost as if she can't respect the time and effort that went into catching that much.

"Chloe," He takes a deep breath, "It's not complete yet, but you can have your first break now."  
She rolls her blue eyes and that level of almost intimacy is lost, "Why does it take so long?"

Chloe marches over to her abandoned bag to grab her water bottle and guzzle it, and may be there's something about how unladylike and just absolutely stubborn right now that almost has him laughing, that has an old flicker of something residing in his heart.

She takes the next fifteen minutes to text Sabrina, to drink more water, and to just sit, relaxed, as if she'd spent all day in front of him rather than thirty minutes being sketched carefully on to the page.

"You ready?" He finally asks, half dreading the glow that she shines under whenever she pauses, and let's a hint of something or other away from his control show.

Nathanael denies the attraction that perches itself in his heart, figures that it's only over the beauty of capturing a beautiful woman for the first time looking beautiful, because he understands finding a woman or man beautiful without having to have a crush on them.

He's an artist, it's in his nature, but a part of him knows when he hides something from himself when the one moment that he's sketching someone beautiful, and he feels a flicker of something beneath the surface.

It's unlike sketching Alya when she asked him curiously why he found inspiration within sketching her for a comic of his, but she'd been willing to pose in whatever way to make it easier for him, and yet it isn't quite like sketching Marinette, when his mind suddenly dives away, gets lost in thoughts, and before long, he has an image of her that leaves his heart aching and yet isn't quite enough.

Chloe is somehow in between, and Nathanael's scared to consider what all that means, because he doesn't want to know.

He carefully sketches out the rest of her body, filling in soft lines where they go, capturing sharper angles, the folds of her clothes, minute details, and details that change everything.

When he finishes and tells her that she can go, he ignores the sudden influx of her perfume as she gives him an uncharacteristic hug after seeing his artwork, "You did better than I thought you would."

She's gone almost as fast as she said it, and he stares down at his sketch, realizing that a part of him will be stuck in the few moments it took for her to react; she glows is all that he can bother thinking.

Chloe doesn't glow with a natural kindness, she doesn't just glow under the light of the room, but rather she glows in ways that he can't quite explain; it's stubbornly defiant and all her.

Nathanael can barely wipe his smile off of his face as he clears up the room, locking it behind him, and half thanking the teacher that let him use the room silently.


	13. Mars

It swirled around her, and her arms faintly shook over the warm heat that pushed along them, brushing gritty sand along her skin.

The vision swirled, and her eyes squinted, where one part began, another ended.

She paused just in time to see a flicker of light, almost translucent, and she couldn't help the faint smirk that started to light up her face as she stared ahead of her.

Ladybug was a quick thinker, had always been, so it didn't take much for her to swing into action, trying to figure out where the 'Martian' was hiding his faded newspaper article that kept his Akuma hidden.

Somehow, time had plopped a firm believer in Martian life, in an utopia where all of his dreams lay, had ended up either transplanted or informed that they had discredited that old report.

Ladybug only felt a cold tremble spread over her skin when she realized that with the added illusion, there were creatures nearby, some looked dangerous.

Bright green fins that acted as wings, buzzing creatures fluttering all around her to sudden life, and she suddenly felt nervous as she watched a small monkey like creature with black feathers that acted like a thin skin over his arms to protect him from dangerous gases moved closer to her with red angry eyes.

"Achoo!" Cat Noir sneezed, a faint tremor overtaking his skin, and she felt the undeniable urge to step closer and soothe his allergy even though she knew better.

"Lucky Charm!" Ladybug screamed, watching a toy helicopter drop into her hands, and already trying to come up with some way to stop the Akuma using a toy helicopter and whatever she had around her.

No one stopped her when she charged the monkey, already looping the blades of the helicopter over his jet black feathers, and spinning the monkey around like a live projectile, knocking him against the Martian's stark white suit, hiding sickly green skin that peeked out at all of the worst parts.

The Martian promptly tried to catch the monkey and drop to avoid it all at once, screaming when the helicopter blades got caught on his suit, tearing it apart, making the Akuma drop his newspaper article as if he was slowly being poisoned and absolutely destroyed, because he believed he was regardless of whatever was actually happening.

Ladybug walked up, grabbed his old newspaper clippings, and tore it into two, purifying the Akuma and wiping the illusion away with apparent ease.

"Sometimes scientists can be wrong, but with all that there is out there, don't ever give up hope." Ladybug smiled, hoping that it will soothe the ache of whatever happened to the man for him to give up his old dreams.

"Thank you, Ladybug." Is all that he says in response, but the teenager doesn't mind; every thank you lights up a small yet solid joy in her heart, the idea that she could have helped someone out, made their life better somehow, by just doing her job that she used to believe she wasn't qualified for.

"Pound it." She smiled a bright smile before she turned around and headed home, thankful for the chance to go home and relax, and yet glad to have helped someone out regardless.


	14. Nightmare

**Dedicated to my friend, Texas Variety Katie-Bug, for inspiring new headcanons, darker ones, for Mrs. Agreste and La Paon for me to come to believe in or at least contest against my more cheerful ones.  
**

Steel blue eyes flash open, caught in the abyss of what could very well be a storm or the calm before the storm as something in the air just screams that it's not right.

His stomach does cartwheels despite itself, and Gabriel Agreste is left staring at black before suddenly color flashes like the mist over glasses, warping the world into blurry, watered down images.

He gasp when green and peach reveal themselves in the almost absolute darkness, and she stands before him: blond hair piled up as if she were tying it into a bun, only to stop and give up, her eyes are wild and green as if a part of her as snapped somehow.

His heart plummets to his feet, "C-Can you hear me?" It's almost like he's trying to find the words to soothe some distant part of her like he's become a psychiatrist, a counselor, and he feels completely like one, can nearly imagine being dressed in a gray suit with a bright, white hospital coat draped over his frame, can nearly imagine a clipboard in his hands.

Gabriel blinks past his own half shift, but he's more concerned for the woman before him: La Paon as he'd often whispered after days that dragged on, after pride nuzzled itself into his chest and in to her own too, and he'd breathe it like their own near silent mantra.

Now, it didn't feel at all like an endearment; it sent ice pricks all over his heart, and he wanted to curl up away from her, react on instinct, but he never could pull away from her.

Her pale hands morph before his very eyes, leaving him to blink as if he can send the transformation back to its old form, and yet it's real, feels real, and it hurts when clawed hands, talons as he reminds himself, dig in, find purchase where otherwise there was none.

Gabriel doesn't whimper, doesn't have the voice in his throat to do so, and he doesn't cry even though he wants to; there's something about seeing the woman he loved basking in his pain that kills a part of him off silently.

Her green eyes don't soothe as she presses those talons into his broad shoulders, digging down deep, deep as she can go, and he bleeds over the gray suit and the stark, white hospital overcoat.

Gabriel pushes her back with struggling fingers, and the harpy as she appears before him doesn't relent; harpies aren't supposed to be beautiful, but this one is as she's dressed in her old suit, her old transformation, blond hair looking soft despite itself.

He hates how his hands slacken and how her nails, claws, talons dig deeper into his wrists as if she can't really help herself, as if she has to be on top even now.

Gabriel thought she loved him, thought that he loved her much more than anything else, more than Plagg loved Tikki, and yet nothing quite felt real while feeling much more real than ever.

Did she truly hate Hawkmoth when she purred his names from sultry lips, when she begged for him to let her call him by his 'superhero' name as she'd called it long ago?  
It was a time before Adrien, before parenthood, and he truly had no idea how much more it felt for her to take his name, to embrace his last name like a lost child, and he still couldn't breathe in awe of it even when it should have felt normal.

Nothing felt normal with her; everything felt like a dream, a fantasy, instead of a reality, and yet right now, he's living a nightmare.

She'd been everything to him once, he still sought that kind of life from her; he still loved the woman that would push down his office chair, so that she could give him an upside kiss, still laughed as she sang his name when he'd worked too long, and she wanted him to relax for once.

She'd been the woman that he'd danced with and let his past be his past, because if she'd been his future, it would be more than anything he'd ever wanted or had before and yet right now, his body runs slick with blood, his own.

"One for every Akuma." She purrs in his ear, and he never feels less like a hero than right now, "One for every time that you ignored our son."

She steps back, eyeing how his gray suit falls away in shambles, "And one for every time you made me feel abandoned."

When La Paon steps forward to leave more talon marks on his skin, he can't refuse or turn away, just bite his lip, and hope that the torture clawing out through her to him will just stop.

It ultimately doesn't as she presses her talons further into his arms before leaving one last purr in his ear, "Time for you to go back to the land of the living."

Perhaps this some cruel relief to realizing that it was just a dream as his head aches and pounds from the wine that he'd had at dinner, his fingers feel numb from clawing and clinging at his skin and his bed while he slept, and he felt tired, restless even, from the night that he'd had.

If Hawkmoth sends out a strange Akuma that night, weak and born out of desperation, no one has to know what a nightmare he'd had.


	15. Opal

Her small fingers grasped over the gem, sparkling in a myriad of colors on her neck, balancing perfectly against peachy skin.

She smiles as she leans against the man beside her, and even if it isn't much to have to balance so much like this, to trust the other fairy as they'd once been before times changed and shifted like leaves under the steady flow of wind.

Tikki smiles, "Why, Opal, Plagg?" It doesn't seem like him to gift her a jewel, especially knowing how limited these forms are, how one day they'll be back to what they've been for so long; it surely wouldn't keep.

"Where we live now, Opal is the simple of hope and purity." Plagg smiles, "You've always been much purer than me, and I hope that no matter what happens, we'll always be this close." His dark eyes look almost anxious at revealing so much, and she remembers with a fond smile that he's not normally the sort to be so sweet and open.

It's a beautiful sentiment regardless, and it lifts a weight that she didn't know she had off of her shoulders.

"Thank you," She smiles as if some kind of light that she's seldom seen has lit up her face, "Plagg."

He smiles, "It was nothing."

She can't help the fact that she loops her arms around his waist tight, once, and holds on, nuzzling into his shoulder and just thankful to give him a hug and thankful for the gift.

Even after all these years of being friends though a little something more would be a better term for them, she still felt as if everything was nearly new in an odd way while remaining remarkably familiar.

Steady arms around her waist kept a part of her rooted in whatever they are, always had been from days before they were Kwamis, to being Kwamis, and now being something a little more human.

They may only have the next thirty years or so to be somewhat human though it still was its own kind of gift; she's well aware though that regular magic has a way of slipping away from humans sometime after they attain it.

The fact that a transformation spell was used to let the two of them be human for a short while was a gift from the humans that they have become close to.

Tikki was thankful for however long they did end up having; it had let her have today with Plagg after all, let her know all over again that she and Plagg are in this for the long haul, are in this for forever.


	16. Pudding

Her blond hair falls down around her shoulders, preaching innocence, even though she stands in dark feathers, green peeking out, hinting at something softer, friendlier.

La Paon is the name that they call her on the streets, it's the name that they can barely squeak out, so it's no wonder how much of a facade peeks through her gentle interior.

Her bat lies at her feet, battered in from use, feathers falling from it that likely stained it when the blood of whoever became her enemy.

She stands carefully off to the side, a small child bundled up near her breast, her blond hair peeking past the hood of her suit, the small child wrapped in blue looked just enough like her that he couldn't be stolen.

"Hey, Gabriel," She purrs softly, "We need to get him home and changed. You know how finicky he gets when he's left in the cold so long after he's ate too." Her smile is all practiced innocence even as her hood falls down to frame her hair from behind.

"My little peahen, don't you think you're rushing?" Hawkmoth chides her with a playful lilt to his voice as he pulls out of his suit, changing to a well worn suit that best of all, doesn't have any blood splatters on it.

"Puddin'," She breathes, "No, I'm not." People often assume that Hawkmoth is the leader, the stronger of the two, but they haven't met his wife if they think that's the case; even with a baby nestled against her chest, she stands dominant and almost cold.

Gabriel rolls his eyes, but says nothing else when he reaches out a hand for his son.

"Thank you." She tugs out of her suit, hopping on one foot for a second when her balance stumbles, and she quickly grabs her regular clothes, a pretty, pink dress that somehow brings the color of her soft skin into focus.

She dumps their suits into their bag that they'd brought along and counts the money that they've earned, "We'll have your business flourishing in no time." She smiles like it's all that they do this for.

He knows as well as she does that she does this for the thrill of it, and that La Paon is not content just remaining a model; she needs to work, push the envelope of reality, of morals, and further content herself in the world falling apart around her.

"Why did we have a son?" Gabriel shrugs, feeling burdened despite himself, and trying to ignore the stern frown that darkens her face.

"Because it's the perfect cover, Puddin', and haven't you always wanted a child to call your own?" She only calls him her pudding or some variant of it when she's seriously ticked off, and he knows better than to push the young mother now.

He quiets, content to hurry up and head home, so that they can safely pursue crime another day.


	17. Quaint

It fit like a glove over her frame, and his eyes were drawn completely in under her spell.

There was a rustic charm to it, to realizing that her suit could have been so much more to boldly proclaim herself as a model or the very equivalent of one regardless of profession.

It was like suiting up for the first time all over again and getting a chance to see her completely transformed; it was almost a mirror of what he surely looked like except that there was a charm in how hidden the suit made her appear.

Dark greens blended into shadows, and her gorgeous blond hair only spilled out just so; he was transfixed.

Hawkmoth couldn't quite help but find it odd; it was odd to be attracted to her even more so since she was dressed in something so unlike the clothing that she'd normally wear, it was odd to be drawn in under her charm like a magnet.

His wife had always been gorgeous and yet seeing the way that she stood, suited up, a gorgeous peahen, more subdued than any peacock could ever be, had left a part of himself speechless and dried his throat up like a desert had just swept into the space between his teeth and tongue.

"So Hawkmoth, what's first line of business?" Something in the faux professional tone brought a smile to his face.

"Just try out our powers for now." He murmured, happy to see the smile that lit up her face, deciding that may be a part of him found it a little exotic to see his wife appear for once not like the woman that regularly had caught many men's eyes.

She'd been beautiful, had worn a great many beautiful outfits ever since she was born, and he knew somehow that she loved this one a great deal for it was freeing and came with a bow tied box of freedom.

La Paon was beautiful in her own way, and all that Hawkmoth wanted to do was savor that quaint beauty even though it was perhaps odder than odd to admire the gentle way that her suit made her blend in with every shadow, odd to savor how plain her attire was especially when he'd always been so invested in fashion, so in love with it, and worked hard to make the best designs that he could.

She could look beautiful in anything or may be just about anything, and he found himself admiring the casual beauty of her, something alien, he realized, to most people; most loved the extravagant, the lavish, the attempt to draw in eyes.

La Paon is a peahen, not a peacock, and while her male counterpart would ostentatiously show off his bright and breathtaking feathers, she would not; her beauty came from within or something just a little different.

She didn't need to flaunt to shine, and Gabriel appreciated that; she just needed to be there, to even blend in at times.

La Paon was pretty in the way of a peahen blending in among her sisters, pretty in the way of slipping into shadows to hide in the dark; during the day, she'd have to reach out and would be easy to spot.

At night, she ruled, hopping past shadows and across rooftops, leading Hawkmoth on a dead chase, not meant for either of them to catch each other, and definitely not meant for a gain; she was simply stretching her legs and letting joy seep into her suit.

He can't help after letting her have her fun for about a half an hour or more, looping his arms casually around her waist and pulling his wife into a kiss; it's perfect with the passion that flutters to the surface, the passion that doesn't die when it isn't shown off, and he loves her more for it, for always bravely loving him back.


	18. Robust

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that she is very strong even when detransformed, and may be it wasn't supposed to be found out this way.

She walked in to the waiting room with her hair piled up into a bun, her eyes bright though not super enthused about a regular checkup at the doctor's office, and she carried herself well, with a certain assured confidence that must have taken years of being Ladybug to fully establish.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng was a new patient to this particular office, and naturally she got the newest doctor, a young man that was good at what he done, and so when she followed the nurse and sat down after quickly answering questions and had to wait for the doctor to arrive in the room and make sure that she was perfectly fine.

She began by counting the designs on the wall and ceiling as sometimes the wait could be excruciatingly long though she counted herself lucky when she'd only managed to count six of the thirteen or so decorations on the wall as he walked in though he looked more than a little familiar to her, "Adrien Agreste?"

He smiled back at her, but didn't really offer much else other than the basic questions before he'd have to check to make sure that she was indeed fine.

When he pressed the stethoscope to her stomach and told her to breathe deeply, she realized that he was surprised briefly by how muscular she was.

It was only when he'd slipped up later on and called her by 'Ladybug' that she realized that something in her appearance and obvious strength reminded him of the superheroine.

She sighed, "Please don't tell me that you're Cat Noir?" She dreaded asking that question, but something did seem a little more than just the Adrien that she remembered from Lycee.

"I am." He mumbled as quietly as he could, and despite her own dislike of her identity being found out by a regular Wellness Checkup, she couldn't help but feel at least a little relieved.

"I am Cat Noir, and I'm your doctor this evening." He shrugged, and she bit back a giggle as it shouldn't be this funny; somehow the idea of Cat Noir wearing a doctor's uniform over his superhero one planted itself in her head and refused to go away.

"I'm Ladybug, and I know as well you know now that I'm perfectly healthy." She chimed in with a happy smile, hoping that no one entered the room then to hear their confessions to being superheroes.

"You are." Adrien's eyes twinkled.


	19. Silent

She felt his presence behind her like the tingling of flames, but she didn't say anything as she felt his arms loop around her waist or as he kissed her neck; he hadn't made a sound when he'd walked up behind her, and she wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that he was still transformed from this morning's Akuma battle.

Marinette couldn't help the fact that her face lit up in a radiant smile at his touch; it still felt almost new even though they'd been married for three years now.

She spun to face him, just to lean up and kiss his kitty ears and his cheeks; she adored the easy way that they moved together now after all of this time, and she couldn't help but lean up further and kiss his lips.

Marinette couldn't help her own smile even when he detransformed into her own arms, and she nestled closer against him, leaning close to him.

It was unbelievable that while so much stayed the same, so much changed too; it was wonderful to know just what to do to be there for her husband and his Kwami too, and it was wonderful on late night patrols to just talk and laugh on quiet nights, sometimes steal a kiss here or there.

Ladybug loved how after patrols, it often felt like a date night, as if they could have them more often now.

Her smile only grew softer when he asked if he could help her make breakfast and as she let him stand beside her and work with her.

Sometimes even among silence, joy grew louder still.


	20. Team

"We're a team, you know that right?" Juleka looped her arms more easily and snugly over Rose's waist, "We've got each other's back no matter what even when we can't stand beside each other."

Rose blinked back the tears that threatened to spill as she fought her own nerves, "Tomorrow, you'll be there, right?"

It felt odd among dress fittings and making bold plans and deciding what to eat, where to put flowers, who to invite, and just everything all together to suddenly worry; Juleka had helped her with all of the planning as they both tried to incorporate so much of the other in every last detail.

Juleka smiled at her, "Of course, I'll be there. I'll be waiting for my lovely princess to walk down the aisle and meet me there."

Rose stared up into her dark eyes and smiled, "I'll walk there, but I may have trouble keeping my balance." It was meant to be playful, but it came out more truthful.

"I'll just have to catch you then." Juleka told her softly, and Rose couldn't help but snuggle deeper into her arms, into her embrace.

"Okay." She smiled, already imagining whether she'd trip over her dress and wind up in Juleka's arms; Juleka in a dark dress, because she decided not to wear a suit nor a white wedding dress.

The dark purple and black dress would accentuate her figure so nicely, and Rose knew that it would be easy to see the beautiful photographer standing there waiting for her bride to walk over to her and manage to trip on her own feet.

She was still so thankful for having her father walk her down the aisle to meet Juleka even though she doubted that this was whatever her father had expected some day.

Rose could already see how their giant flower chain would look, all pinks, light greens, yellows, blacks, reds, and dark purples almost appearing over Juleka like a crown just above her head.

She smiled at the thought of meeting her in that little patch of green of the field below their feet; she wanted their first kiss as wives to last forever, days in and days out.

"We're the best team." Juleka spoke softly, "May be we'd even put Cat Noir and Ladybug to shame despite how cool we know they are."

Rose giggled as she could just see it now, the superheroes looking on at their wedding, and half gushing over how absolutely beautiful the two brides were and how much of a wonderful team they were as they moved practically in sync.

She loved the image in her head and couldn't help but lean forward and kiss Juleka as her reality always beat her dreams in its own special way.


	21. Ugly

She winced as she worked to steady her shirt over the wound before it suddenly became too much, irritated under the constant brushing of fabric, half staining her darker than usual shirt, and all in all, making it much harder to hide her wound from her classmates and her parents.

Marinette grunted at the pain and muttered softly under her breath as she lifted up her black shirt that was almost an exact parallel of her whiter one, with red blossoms crawling up the top, and she stared at the wound that looked bigger than she remembered, gushing blood though thankfully not very fast, and she sighed as she grabbed at the bandages that were already mostly slipped off.

As she pulled off her shirt after her jacket in the supposedly empty locker room, she heard a gasp, and she felt hands just a breadth away from her wound, nervous and worried.

When she glanced up, she met the worried, green eyes of Nathanael's, and her heart broke in her chest; it somehow meant the world that he was worried about her and not concerned about the fact that she wasn't wearing a shirt right now.

His worry overtook any other aspect of himself, and she couldn't help but admire him a little more as the young artist opened up his own locker to grab a spare shirt, reminding her with the motion that she'd forgotten one at home.

"Do you have anything for me to stitch it up with? It looks bad." He winced as he said the last few words, and she realized that he cared more than she'd known; how hadn't she noticed that not only did he have a crush on her, but he also worried over her.

It made his crush appear far less fickle in her eyes though she'd never really considered him fickle to begin with; she'd just assumed that his feelings would probably pass before the school year did, and things would go back to normal to where no one really seemed to have a crush on her.

Nino had moved on after all though Kim hadn't moved on from Chloe, and that probably showed a higher level of perseverance than just about anything.

Kim was stubborn that's for sure.

"I have my sewing kit..?" She wasn't quite sure what to say really as she grabbed the bag that Tikki was in and opened it away from Nathanael's eyes though it probably didn't matter as he worried over her wound.

"That might work." Nathanael sent a soft and sweet smile her way, and Marinette couldn't help but feel that joy radiate through her own being at just the gesture of such a sweet smile, clearly meant to calm her down if she were worried.

Marinette watched Nathanael work, wincing at the pain of the needle moving through her, though she was pleasantly surprised at how steady his hands remained and how absolutely focused he was.

Once he was finished, he moved away from her to grab a small, first aid kit of his that sadly came with barely anything other than bandages, and he took to wrapping them tightly around her, though not tight enough to make her wound reopen.

He offered her his spare button up shirt as soon as he'd finished tying the bandages.

"Thank you so much." Marinette let out a relieved breath as she buttoned up the shirt that hung at least a little loose over her, "Are you sure about lending me your shirt? I may bleed all over it."

"I'll be fine." Nathanael shrugged with another reassuring smile, "Besides, if you want it, you can keep it. You need it for today more than I do."

"Thank you." Marinette felt more than a little grateful as well as more than a little surprised by how fast he acted.

"What happened to you?" His soft voice broke her quickly growing distracted thoughts.

"I was," She took a deep breath, "Out and about, and just fell wrong."

"You didn't go to the hospital?" Nathanael asked softly, "They would have stitched you up with just one look at your wound."

"My parents don't know." Marinette answered quickly, "I didn't want to worry them."

Nathanael's eyes softened, "Just come to me if something like this happens again, alright?"

"I should be fine." Marinette shrugged, not sure that she should bother Nathanael with any of this again just in case he found out her identity or rather how the injuries that lasted past the Cure which were rare would show up right after Akuma attacks.

Nathanael's worried eyes stayed locked on her, "Do you want me to wash your shirt, so that your parents don't see the blood?"

"You don't have to." Marinette took a deep breath, worried that she was already taking up so much of his time and putting him in danger with this much even though she knew that Hawkmoth didn't know her identity.

"I want to." Nathanael answered her, "If it will help you out any."

"Okay, thank you." She handed her shirt and overcoat over.

Nathanael's slightly relieved smile eased a part of her heart, and she couldn't help the joy that spoke through her own answering smile.

She nervously fidgeted in Nathanael's deep orange, button up shirt shortly after when she realized that they should probably leave the locker room and head back to class; her bathroom excuse probably wouldn't hold up for long anyway.

Marinette watched Nathanael tuck his first aid kit and her shirt into his locker, carefully hiding her shirt, before he shut his locker and locked it.

She smiled as she put her sewing kit away, "Thank you for stitching me up."

"It was no problem." Nathanael spoke up, just barely above a whisper, "I was worried about you, and just wanted to help you get better to the best of my ability."

"You did a good job." Marinette murmured, thankful, and she realized that Nathanael was letting her walk to class first, just in case she fell over or had another medical emergency.

Once she entered their class again, he waited for a bit before making his entrance to avoid the rumors that could surely spread when Chloe was around.

Marinette found that her bandages once again kept her shirt from irritating her wound that hopefully wouldn't be as festered and ugly tomorrow as it was today; she already knew that it had to be healing, little bit by little bit.

She just hoped that no one paid too much attention to her change of shirt or the fact that she'd definitely limped when she left the classroom earlier; she just wanted to keep her identity as much of a secret as she could and heal as fast as time would let her.


	22. Vestige

It was like a long forgotten mark on a calendar, the last grappling with parental responsibility, the moment of trying to appease him that doesn't falter, becomes many moments instead.

Adrien can't think of when they entered this practically solo dance, when they started watching things fizzle and fade; perhaps it was after his mother left, though he'd come to doubt that that was the true start of this cut off.

He'd never been super close to his father as the man ran the house like an extended office, and Adrien was left like a secretary, not even in control of his fate in this broken place.

It start felt like a spark had sizzled and danced before his mother had left, before she vanished without even a trace, and he wonders if it had used up its last surge of electrical energy, its last surge of joy, on the day that she walked out that door and left with no packed suitcase, no beloved brooch, no pictures, no clothes, nothing to her name aside from whatever was on her back.

Adrien wondered though what they were really clinging to whenever his father relented or Adrien pushed for something a little more, a little like retaliation, though against what he isn't ever quite certain.

He doesn't shove or push or do much of anything when his father's arms loop around him, pull him tight, and he remembers the past like a mark on an old calendar, once valuable, though mostly just a relic for fools to grab out of the trash, and he realizes this hug feels a lot like that: a hidden charm, a tell tale tribute of the past.

It doesn't matter whether his father used to hug him more when he was younger, when his mother was still around, as it just feels like something that belongs in the olden days, something unreal, something that they are barely holding on to.

Words fester on his tongue, half reminders and fading memories, half things that can bounce off the walls and cause arguments; sometimes he isn't quite sure where the cut off between child Adrien and Cat Noir are compared to this strange limbo of who he is now.

He smiles and hopes that his father doesn't find it a weak one or see just a model smile staring up at him; he feels somewhere like the pit of his stomach that his father can just tell from hours spent with models, hours spent with his mother, when a smile was faked purely for the camera's sake or some strange means of hiding the world from the heart of the one that is smiling.

There's a certain secrecy to modeling, something that peeks out of the blinds of where reality meets fantasy, and Adrien realizes that sometimes he's still stuck in that middle ground when he's supposed to just be Adrien.

When his father pulls back, Adrien can just imagine that this isn't like stepping up to a cliff and realizing all that's before you is such a steep fall, a winding path that gets you nowhere fast, while what's behind you is gone and dead like wilting flowers that haven't seen a watering can or steady rainfall in months.

It feels both like the last moment that could ever be like this and one of the last; as if there's a silent expectation of what they can find just around this bend, just turn another corner, let reality brush along beside you.

Adrien takes a deep breath, either for his sake or for his father's, but neither sake speaks the loudest to his own mind, and he tries to smile again.

"Don't pretend for me." His father's eyes focus on something quite far in the distance, "I worry sometimes that that's what people in my life always do to me."

There's the silent heartbreak of what if his mom had been doing that for years, and Adrien can't look at his father for a while even as he spins on his heel and leaves the room.

The feeling of loss or almost loss clings to the much too big space, and Adrien realizes that he and his father may never be close again; this is a type of loss without his mother fleeing, without someone dying, it's another loss, the almost could have beens becoming just reminders of the past.

Adrien remembers that calendar again as he moves past the broken silence in his room that irritates his ears with its ringing, and his attention is so far rotted away by all that's fading faster than he could ever dare let it, that Plagg's words are too soft for his ears.


	23. West

The barbs really dug into her feet, and she really regretted not having boots like her loyal partner had, who had met up with her over top of the fence.

"So the goal is to bring more supplies from the West over to the East, right?" The cat themed hero beside her shifted, and she admired the darkness of his suit that kept him hidden from any cameras, from snipers laying low.

Her own suit was muted red with as much black as it could get; her arms were covered in a black material, her neck was hugged by a black turtleneck, and her spots were large black circles meant to hide away as much of her muted red as possible.

Anyone as visible as can be is liable to get shot down, to be tugged down out of the way, and they knew as well as they did from their first attempt that it was impossible to get civilians over the wall and to safety without injuring everyone involved.

The memory of that little girl clinging to her, fingers stained red, and crying though no sound left her throat, just tear tracks falling from her eyes, burned Ladybug in the worst way possible.

She knew that she couldn't help how things were, but she denounced her German or faux German blood as it were; she'd started only speaking a mixture of broken French and fumbling Mandarin Chinese around her home ages ago.

Ladybug hopped off of the wall and watched her partner join her on this side, from the way he held himself, she realized that he must sleep on the other end of the wall; unlucky paired up with lucky.

She sighed, shoulders stiff and tense from when she stood on the wall, feeling more exposed than she had any right to feel; she knew that her suit blended into the shadows with only a hint of the woman underneath though it wasn't quite the shade of black of her partner's suit, hid her less than his hid him.

Ladybug moved among the limited streets, the limited half of the city, as she entered a small, half abandoned bakery, and spoke to the man there, thankful that he didn't recognize her as more than the masked heroine that everyone knew roamed the streets at night, and that he didn't see a glimpse of Marinette Dupain-Cheng behind her mask.

Once she'd left with a decent amount of food, she followed a somewhat curious but still desperate Cat Noir over towards a small, medical office.

The man that ran the place tiredly let them have the medicine, making them promise to protect his niece and her mother; they lived in the East.

Ladybug bit back her gulp, bit back her fear like Tikki'd trained her to, and assured him that they'd do what they could.

"Is there anything that you need?" She asked softly, knowing that regardless of the willingness of everyone else to help that they could be captured, could be interrogated, too many people knew of the masked heroes though thankfully no one knew their identity, and they could be killed.

"Nothing more than a little walk with you, M'lady." There was an unspoken phrase there, 'through the West,' and Ladybug wondered not for the first time how things came to be as separated, how distance meant more than just a simple word, more than a basic direction.

Just the span of a short walk meant the difference between enough food to survive over the ability to rest in peace; she was lucky to be on this side, and yet she didn't feel lucky when she woke up, stared at her mom's picture, and talked to it as if the wall wasn't just shy of their humble, little bakery.

"Just," She sighed, "Here." She handed a small loaf of bread to her partner, "Just take care of yourself and your family for me, alright?"

It didn't make her stomach rest easy, but all that she wanted was for the few that she'd let herself draw close to, to be happy, to be alive, to be well.

His green eyes shattered a part of her heart when they turned to face her.

They reminded her of the woman that slept with her neighbors, took up their young daughter's old room, that sometimes cried herself to sleep, as if she could feel the wall dividing up her heart, dealing physical blows.

Sometimes Marinette thought of that woman kind of like her own mother; her mother being stuck in the East, divided away from them, alone without them.

It could always be worse; you could be alone, and she knew that, knew that if you were isolated from family and friends just enough that the world becomes an even darker, even colder world.

She scaled the wall with her partner, helped him deliver the food and medicine where it needed to go, and encouraged him to take that bit of bread home to his family.

Ladybug can't help but lean forward and kiss his cheeks like she's full blooded French, like this is France, and she smiles a sad, heartbroken smile when she sees his face turn red.

She doesn't see him for months after that or may be it's longer; time has a way of feeling both infinite and finite, and she can't quite find the words to heal a broken heart.

Ladybug continues her mission, bringing food, medicine, and supplies over the wall from her home, from her half of the city, over to his.

Any survivor is another beautiful person, another chance at hope, but she doesn't quite have the words to say when hope feels half shattered without her partner.

* * *

The sun beats down on her as she watches and leans to help when she can move past her heart in her throat, tears in her eyes, and the nerves that kick start around her, only amplified by the sheer frenzy of those already in front of her.

Her hands don't shake when she tears down pieces of that wall, of that divide, hears families' rejoicing when just a small section has been undone, witnesses families running past the rubble to embrace.

Nearly cries herself, nearly cries harder, when most of the wall is down, and she watches as fiancees finally greet each other with a kiss after so long, and her heart breaks for what they've been through.

She can barely breathe when Cat Noir runs to her, lifts her off of the ground, "Ladybug, Ladybug, M'lady." It's a repeated mantra, and she isn't sure anymore where one of her names ends, and the next begins.

"Cat Noir, are you okay?" When she pulls back, she sees that whatever parts of his skin are visible are covered in bruises, cuts, scars, and even remnants of dried blood.

She feels nauseous once she realizes that they'd caught him and tortured him, treated him like an animal, or even worse.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You're here." He sent her a quickly steadying smile, "You're the only one that felt real from the West."

Ladybug smiles despite herself as she drags him away from the sunlight, to the faintest shadows between buildings, and let's her transformation drop; the people had needed Ladybug, but she just needed her partner and to wander back and find her mother once she can breathe again.

"Ladybug?" He doesn't know her name, she can tell, but when there is a flicker of recognition, like he's seen her somewhere before, just never knew a name to go with her face, she feels relief pool somewhere within her.

"No, Marinette." She can barely speak fast enough, "Marinette Dupain-Cheng, my father runs a bakery in the West."

Somehow he smiles despite himself and lets his transformation drop, "Adrien. Adrien Agreste, my father ran a business in the East."

Somehow it's all that she never knew she wanted; he looks familiar in the way of a long forgotten childhood memory, and she pulls herself into his arms to kiss his lips, trying to remind herself that he's here before her and not leaving anymore.

When they walk back, hand in hand, her mother is hugging her father tight like she can't quite burrow into his arms the way that she wants to, needs to, and Marinette realizes not for the first time that the wall has been up for far too long.

She tugs Adrien's arm and encourages him to run with her, and when she hugs her parents, both at once for the first time in forever, and it makes her feel like a little girl again, Adrien's right by her side.

Marinette can't help but cry now without the protective shell of her suit, while she feels like a child for the first time in forever, and she watches as Adrien and his mother move to hug for the first time in forever too.

A part of her can't even be surprised that the woman that her neighbors housed when she had nowhere to go was her partner's mother, and she smiles a sad smile when she catches Adrien's mom embracing what has to be his father for the first time in so long.

All that they can find the energy for is full of new reunions and grasping at the thin hints of where they can go from here; she's thankful that her partner, her black cat, will have her back through all of the slow rebuilding, the slow chance of true joy entering their lives again and the lives of those all around them.


	24. Xis

Alya groaned as she stared ahead of herself and wondered really why she had to be pacing among a bunch of apple stands and pretending that she truly believed that Marinette really had to be here.

She glared at a row of green apples and debated how long it would take until her best friend realized that she didn't quite believe her excuses anymore.

Alya waited, counting silently in her head, before her best friend rushed right over to her, "I-I'm sorry, I got lost."

"You told me earlier that you were heading here an hour and a half ago, right when the Akuma attacked." Alya shrugged, waiting to see if Marinette would finally noticed that she knew by the hints that she dropped and the slight dropping of her voice in exasperation.

"I-I got lost for a while, sorry, and then I had to hide, because that Akuma was blowing up buildings around me, and I got to watch Cat Noir and Ladybug save the day from where I was." Marinette shrugged helplessly.

"You don't even like the superheroes or at least don't admire them like the rest of us, and I don't remember him blowing up buildings." Alya grumbled, deciding to ignore Marinette's anxious mumbles, because she'd already realized that subtleties didn't work on her best friend.

* * *

"So, Nino, has he noticed that you know yet?" Alya leaned against her boyfriend's side again and wondered if there was anyway that Adrien may be less clueless than Marinette.

"No," He sighed, "Do you think we should mention something about their identities?"

"May be," Alya gasped, "We should talk about ships. You know instead of the usual Adrinette and LadyNoir discussions, we should mention something about the other cute, rarer pairs."

"You know that I don't know ship names like you do." Nino shrugged.

"Okay, you talk to Adrien about Adrinette and LadyNoir since you know those ones." Alya sighed though she was looking forward to talking over some ships in particular with Marinette.

* * *

"So, Marinette, do you know what's even cuter than LadyNoir?" Alya teased with a mischievous glint to her eyes.

"You're finally moving on away from them?" Marinette looked relieved, "You and Nino?"

"No, MariChat!" Alya squealed, "You and Cat Noir. You said that he flirted with you once, and can you just imagine how stubborn you'd be? May be you'd turn our favorite stray cat into something similar to a kitty model."  
Alya hoped that she dropped a few, good, solid hints to her best friend.

Marinette's face turned bright red, "I-I'm not dating that alley cat." She looked so embarrassed and flustered that Alya realized despite her denial, she was actually considering it; it must have not crossed her mind before.

"O-Okay." Alya smiled, "If you get together with Cat Noir, imagine the wonderful experience, and then this other really cute ship can happen."

"What ship?" Marinette mumbled, looking both curious and a little overwhelmed.

"Ladrien!" Alya chanted for a moment, "Ladybug and Adrien. He already really admires her, and can you just imagine how cute it would be to get a reverse of the regular superhero paired up with civilian trope?"

"Th-That's not possible." Marinette flushed, and Alya briefly hoped that she didn't give her any dastardly ideas.

"Why is it not possible?" Alya paused for a moment, "Ladybug would be single then."

"I-I don't know, sorry." Marinette shrugged, and Alya nearly groaned out loud again; how does she miss this again?

* * *

"You know, I think that Alya was right before, Ladybug and Cat Noir would make a cute couple." Nino shrugged, and Alya smiled at him, catching Adrien squirming and blushing in his chair.

"Why?" Marinette muttered dejectedly, "Alya's been gushing over other ships now."

"Well, they fight crime together, right?" Nino prodded, "So they have to have pretty good chemistry to always work so well together, and you know, what superhero doesn't want a super awesome, hot superhero girlfriend?"  
Alya laughed though bit her tongue to contain the sound especially when she noticed how red her best friend went and the way that Adrien stilled with a darker flush to his cheeks.

She wondered how they never noticed how the other one reacted to these conversations as Marinette and Adrien both still seemed oblivious.

* * *

"Plan C then?" Alya grumbled, already beyond done with all of this.

"Talk to Marinette over how much a cat reminds you of her superhero partner or how much it reminds of my bro? I don't know." Nino suggested; it seemed that their best friends were no closer to realizing that they'd failed to keep their identities secret from them.

"That might work! At least, may be, she'll admit to her feelings for Cat Noir which is sort of what you were building towards the other day, and then she'll be more interested in revealing herself to him and working towards a real relationship." Alya theorized with a radiant grin to which she received a gentle smile from her boyfriend.

Ultimately due to a conversation that got out of hand a while ago, she and Nino had discovered the opposite's best friend's secret identity.

* * *

'Please come help me pick out a new pet for my sisters and I. Mom and Dad okayed it.' Alya typed with quick and eager fingers.

'Okay, I'll meet you soon.' Was Marinette's quick response.

"Yes!"

* * *

"So this black cat has green eyes." Alya began, staring at the absolutely adorable kitten, half tempted to buy it even though her parents really hadn't approved of a new pet for the family.

"Yeah, he does, doesn't he?" Marinette mutters, reaching a hand out for the kitten to sniff before she petted the adorable, little fella.

"So, don't you think he looks kind of like Cat Noir?" Alya began.

"Cat Noir isn't a real cat, you know?" Marinette responded, half sounding concerned.

"He actually has green the color of Adrien's eyes, don't you think?" Alya tried again.

"The kitten or Cat Noir?" Marinette asked, "Either way, their cat eyes are a little more green and aren't shaped like his."

Alya groaned, "Do you think Adrien's more of a dog or cat person?" May be, she'll just jump over to plan D.

"Dog," Marinette answered, "Particularly one that doesn't shed so much, so that he won't get fur all over his clothes that he'll model. Plus, he'd love to shower a little pup in affection, don't you think?"

"I think cat." Alya smiled, "Cats are starved for affection and sometimes can be quite stubborn. I think he'd like to have a small cat that falls asleep in his arms when they're laying in bed or on a couch. Plus, he'll get the chance to baby it better since they grow less big than dogs do on average. I don't think that he'll wear his model clothes all the time at home either, and he won't need to walk a cat the way he would a dog, works a bit better for a busy man."

"You put a lot of thought into this." Marinette muttered.

"Well, he's my boyfriend's best friend, and my best friend's crush. Plus, you'll never know when you need to be getting a surprise gift, and he's always sending Nino and I cat memes." Alya smiled mischievously.

"I didn't know that. May be he just likes the memes?" Marinette suggested.

"You have no argument, girl." Alya laughed, smiling at her victory, though a little bummed that Marinette didn't figure anything out from the conversation.

* * *

"So, Mari, how do you think that Cat Noir's home life is?" Alya tried, hoping that this plan turned out at least a little better than her last one.

"I hope that it's good, but I've never asked." She sighed as her mind wandered to that interesting idea, "I doubt he'd tell a civilian anyway."

Alya couldn't help but smile a little over Marinette's quick cover up that may have been more than a little bit pointless anyway.

"I think that it might be a little like Adrien's." Alya paused before adding more, "A little restrictive, so that he feels a lot freer when he's Cat Noir."

"I never thought of that." Marinette murmured, "Do you think Adrien would be like that if he ever became a superhero?"

"Yes!" Alya chirped, "Have you not met our model friend with his love of memes and puns and anime?"

"I've met him." Marinette assured her, "I know that."

Alya shook her head with a bright smile on her face though felt like grumbling when Marinette still didn't realize that Alya wasn't talking about some hypothetical theory here.

* * *

"So Plan F?" Alya sighed, waiting for an answer that she didn't really need to hear.

"Plan F." Nino confirmed for her as he looked up from his game that he'd been playing from where he laid on his bed.

"How can they be so oblivious and miss something as good as this?" Alya grumbled as she twisted around to lean forward and kiss her boyfriend on the lips, "I'd rather them be this happy too as they clearly like each other a heck of a lot."

Nino chuckled, "It's probably why they haven't guessed each other's identities by this point."

Alya shook her head before she leaned entirely back to her old spot, "They may need medical help."  
"Probably not, Adrien's old man hasn't guessed his son's identity by this point." Nino pointed out.

"He doesn't really spend much time with his son." Alya sighed, "He needs Parenting 101 classes, and a chance to be a better dad. Either way, I guess Marinette isn't as close to Adrien as we are, but you'd think she'd see the signs with how attentive she is over him."

"He does." Nino agreed, "And may be she'll figure it out soon."

"I hope so." Alya sighed as she stared at the yellow wall just across from her, "Do you think that if this keeps going for long, I should just hang up a poster of Cat Noir beside one of her Adrien picture cut outs that she swears she'll take down as soon as they get closer, and only keep the ones for design inspiration?"

"Nah, let me know if it gets to be too much though." Nino shrugs, but his eyes revert to his girlfriend instead of his game, "Hopefully it doesn't come close to that."

"Hopefully." Alya sighed, glancing over to her boyfriend before her thoughts dove down in frustration against her best friend's obliviousness.

* * *

"So," Alya began as she moved around the party, already having traded info and tips with other reporters before then, "Do you think he feels like he doesn't belong in this sophisticated mess like we do?"  
"He knows all about these kinds of parties." Marinette sighed as she moved past to catch another designers attention and ask questions and naturally show off her gorgeous pink dress before she turned her attention back to her best friend.

"Still," Alya sighed, "Do you think our meme toting best bud is all that enthused about another one of his father's fancy parties?"

"He has us this time." Marinette spoke up softly, sounding a little sad.

"He's been super busy with his father's business associates all night." Alya pointed out rather dryly, "Hopefully, his father will let him loose from the business talk sometime soon."

"Yeah," Marinette murmured, glancing over to Nino who'd spent all this time talking to the band and listening to them perform; he seemed to be pretty well acquainted with them by this point.

"I'd figure Adrien would rather be more free, you know? I think he'd rather be Cat Noir than Adrien Agreste right now." Alya suggested, frowning when even the hint of that suggestion didn't spark sudden realization in her friend's eyes at all.

* * *

"You know I've never seen you anywhere near Ladybug at all before." Alya began, "Do you think you could be her? You look kind of similar, you both wear your hair the same, you act a bit alike just like that whole Volpina thing, and you seem pretty close to her."

"Do you really think that I could be a superhero?" Marinette sighed, "I can assure you that I'm the clumsiest person that you know, and I doubt that I could manage all the things that Ladybug can do."

"Marinette," Alya sighed, "You don't give yourself enough credit."

* * *

"You know, I was researching Ladybug and Cat Noir again, and I'd realized that neither you or Adrien have gotten pictures with the two of them. I'm pretty sure that's a sign in it's own right." Alya attempted for what felt like the millionth time.

"Not everyone in Paris has gotten pictures with them." Marinette attempted to explain, "And you know that Cat Noir and I fought against the Evillustrator together."

"Ladybug wasn't there until after you left from what I heard from Cat Noir after that, and besides, you seemed to know quite well what you were doing and how his powers worked." Alya stated, confidently.

"Don't even suggest that I'm Cat Noir, that definitely isn't possible." Marinette smiled, and Alya felt like banging her head against the wall; how was her best friend so oblivious?

* * *

"Ladybug and Cat Noir remind me of the two of you if my bro was more open with you, and if you didn't stutter so much." Nino slyly remarked, "It's kind of indescribable how much you too would definitely make a great Ladybug and Cat Noir fighting team."

"Th-That's insane!" Marinette stammered, waving it off with the simple shake of her hands.

"Y-Yeah, I don't act at all like Cat Noir." Adrien tried, and Alya tried not to grumble under her breath as Nino beside her facepalmed.

* * *

"Just imagine, Mari, if Adrien was your Cat Noir." Alya tried, hoping that it sort of revealed the fact that she knew who they, both, were.

"That's ridiculous." Marinette claimed as she pushed her office chair a bit closer to her computer, "They may look alike, but they act nothing alike."

"Haven't you seen Adrien's cat memes? He puns a lot too, and you see how he is when he's allowed to be open to who he is." Alya exclaimed, hoping that it just would sink in.

"Cat memes don't tell you whether someone's Cat Noir or not. The puns don't either in fact." Marinette loaded two pictures on the computer, "Can you imagine Adrien with cat eyes and messy hair?"

"Yeah," Alya didn't point out how much much the two pictures of him looked really alike, "But can you imagine Ladybug falling all over herself?"

Marinette laughed nervously but shook her head anyway; Alya had a lot to work with here since her friend was more prone to denying her own identity than letting Alya hear the truth that she knew was there.

* * *

"Did you see Adrien in gym today? He was pretty fast and pretty athletic. I was impressed that he could take that course quite like that." Alya claimed as she lounged on Marinette's chaise.

"Yeah, he fences though and plays basketball." Marinette answered, distractedly.

"You were pretty impressive as well." Alya tacked on, hoping that Marinette would simply confess to just being Ladybug regardless.

She didn't, not that Alya was surprised by that fact at all.

* * *

"Don't you think that Cat Noir and Adrien are a little bit similar?" Alya considered them pretty darn similar since they were the same person after all, but she'd have to start a little bit weaker than that with Marinette this time who didn't seem to believe her strong convictions on this very topic.

"Not really." Marinette answered, focusing on the tough Physics problem that both she and Adrien had missed the explanation to in class the other day.

"What about you and Ladybug?" Alya sighed as she watched her best friend's reaction carefully from the slight paling of her skin to her nervous eyes.

"Not at all. Can you imagine me being Ladybug?" Marinette questioned with a certain level of ease.

"Yes, very clearly." Before Alya could make even more obvious claims, Marinette had to rush off when there was an explosion and another Akuma.

"Doesn't Hawkmoth have anything better to do?" Alya grumbled as she dashed off to get the best possible recording of the fight and briefly wondered if it was legal to strap a camera to her best friend's head to get the best possible, in motion footage of the Akuma.

She figured Marinette probably wouldn't let her do that at all.

* * *

"Isn't it odd how much Adrien actually disappears during Akuma attacks?" Alya tried for what felt like an eternity; she was this close to stapling a picture of Cat Noir to Marinette's wall.

"Everyone runs off to hide or in your case get the latest scoop. It's pretty natural to want to do that. Besides he's often targeted by Akuma for no real reason." She shrugged, thinking about the time when he claimed to have been turned into a knight, himself.

"Still," Alya sighed in brief frustration.

"He has reasons for running off, very good ones." Marinette reasoned with a smile.

'Not better than the real reasons.' Alya sighed as the thought popped into her head and yet she couldn't say it, not now, and probably not ever if Marinette kept being so oblivious.

* * *

"Really, there was basically no excuse for him vanishing from that Akuma." Alya grumbled, "She was all flowers and sunshine."

Marinette rolled her eyes, "No Akuma's a good Akuma."

"Why'd you hide anyway?" Alya demanded, nearly face palming when her best friend simply shrugged.

* * *

"Do you think they'll eventually see reason?" Alya grumbled in dismay.

"What plan are we on now anyway?" Nino wondered, "Plan O?"

"Yeah," Alya sighed, "It's getting pretty ridiculous that they haven't even noticed who the other one is or the fact that we know who they both are."

"Just mention something else. May be they'll connect the dots somewhere along the way." Nino suggested, already probably either worn out with this whole situation or at the very least a lot more patient than Alya felt.

"Thanks." Her slightly sarcastic comment went mostly overlooked by her boyfriend after all of that.

* * *

"It's become too much to handle you too always running off when we make plans to study. It's a wonder that you haven't failed a class at all this year, either of you. Do you guys even have spare time anymore?" Alya practically growled at them in her frustration.

Marinette frowned, looking at least a bit apologetic, "I'm sorry, Alya. Things just came up."

"I couldn't help it either, sorry, Alya." Adrien chimed in, and Alya wanted to strangle their necks for still refusing to admit who they were, especially to each other.

"Fine, I forgive you," Alya sighed with gritted teeth; hopefully the truth smacks them in the face sometime soon.

* * *

Finally, Alya pretty much had enough as she pinned the best quality picture of Cat Noir that she'd taken with a close up of his face on Marinette's wall.

"They're probably both doppelgangers." Marinette murmured, "Haven't you heard that there is at least one person in the world that looks just like each and everybody?"  
Alya made some sort of frustrated noise underneath her breath, but ultimately gave up for today.

* * *

"I don't think that I can keep quiet about this anymore." Alya grumbled, "You seem an awful lot like her."

"Alya, I'm not Ladybug." Marinette grumbled, letting the moment pass by.

Alya muttered a disbelieving phrase underneath her breath that Marinette simply ignored.

* * *

"This is getting really ridiculous!" Alya grumbled at another meeting with her three best friends, one of which doubled as her boyfriend.

"What do you mean?" Adrien asked, looking every bit like a oblivious lamb.

"Just you two!" Alya threw her arms up in the air, "Doesn't Marinette remind you of Ladybug?"

"Yeah, she has the same eyes as the superheroine, but that doesn't mean they're one and the same." Adrien clarified.

"But you spend a decent amount of time with Marinette, and you clearly admire Ladybug, don't you notice any similarities other than eye color?"

"Ladybug's secretive, and Marinette doesn't talk to me the same way that you do." Adrien shrugged, looking embarrassed and uncomfortable.

Alya just grumbled some choice words underneath her breath, not quite a response, let alone a proper one to the conversation.

* * *

"Doesn't Cat Noir staring you in the face from your wall remind you of Adrien at all?" Alya grumbled, "They have the same exact expression in those two pictures."

"Not really, they don't act that similar." Alya will take it as a step in the right direction hearing that much from her best friend though she still wished that her best friend would just listen and understand.

* * *

"Describe Adrien to me. What's he like to you?" Alya asked finally, feeling beyond tired with all of this.

"He's kindhearted, selfless, loyal, and he's a gentleman." Marinette spoke softly.

"Doesn't that remind you of anyone?" Alya tried again.

"A lot of people may be somewhat similar, not quite like Adrien though." Marinette spoke up again.

"Describe Cat Noir to me." Alya asked Marinette.

"He's flamboyant, a gentleman, kindhearted, selfless, loyal, determined, and dorky." Marinette finished with a smile.

"Isn't that a little similar to how you described Adrien?" Alya interrogated her friend.

"Not quite the same, I think." Marinette spoke up rather easily, and Alya sighed in muted frustration.

* * *

"It's practically undeniable that the two of you tend to leave classes at the same time during Akuma fights and show back up around the same time. If you're not Cat Noir and Ladybug, are the two of you sneaking into closets as safe, makeout spaces to wait for Akumas to pass?" Alya looked downright agitated, only getting a tired sigh from Marinette.

"I can barely say a whole sentence to him without messing it up, and you think I have the ability to makeout with him?" Marinette scolded her best friend with a bright red face and a tired expression on her face.

"If you treated him the way you treated Cat Noir, you wouldn't quite have the same excuse." Alya told her back with a sterner tone of voice.

"I can't treat him that way." Her face was still a bright, bright shade of red.

"Why not?" Alya muttered, "He'd sure love it and you. Men tend to find confidence irresistible."  
"So do women." Marinette retorted, "And I'd never reject Adrien if he went to ask me out."

"You'd be surprised." Alya grumbled easily as she watched her best friend closely, still more than a little bummed that nothing seemed to be working.

* * *

"You have no problem at all with Lila suddenly taking an interest in Cat Noir? She says he's a lot like Adrien, just better." Alya shrugged, watching Marinette.

"I'm not dating Cat Noir, why would I be upset?" Marinette asked her best friend as she casually flipped through a fashion magazine, looking for neat designs to strike a bit of sudden inspiration in her.

"She's a terrible vixen, and besides that fact, wasn't Cat Noir quite into you when you met?" Alya tried for what had to be the millionth time since she began.

"It's good that he might finally move on from Ladybug since she's clearly not interested in him that way." Alya didn't point out the small amount of tears forming in her best friend's eyes; they were tiny, and she definitely didn't want to push too hard and really upset her.

"But she's a liar and not at all good for him!" Alya demanded, "You'd be way better for him than she'll ever be."

"Alya," Marinette sighed, "I'm sure Ladybug lies to him sometimes to keep her identity a secret, and why would I be good for him when he likes Ladybug and when I don't pursue him?"

"Don't look down on yourself so much!" Alya chirped, trying to encourage her friend, "And you only lie if you have to. I'm sure Ladybug's that way too."

"You shouldn't look up to Ladybug so much." Grumbled Marinette, "She's just an ordinary person behind that mask."

"That's why I look up to her so much." Alya added, "She's incredible and definitely something to aspire towards. Besides, she didn't always want to be a superhero, but she keeps trying anyway."

Marinette shook her head though a light came back to her eyes after Alya's little speech.

* * *

"Where do you go during Akuma fights anyway?" Alya interrogated her best friend, "We've already established that you don't go to broom closets with Adrien."

Marinette's face flushed at the reminder of their old conversation, but she still retorted to her best friend's question, "I go to hide and sometimes I end up getting targeted by the Akuma."

"Isn't it easier to just tell me that you're Ladybug?" Alya grumbled, "Isn't it better to be honest with your best friend?"

"I don't like lying to you." Marinette spoke up.

"Sometimes a girl has to wonder." Alya grumbled, shaking her head in frustration.

* * *

"Does this count as Plan X?" Alya asked her boyfriend from where they stood on top of a huge Xylophone; it certainly seemed to fit with the plan that they were on with both the letter and the one that they just so happened to land on.

"Probably," Nino shrugged, "Do you think we'll get to 'Z,' and what will happen if we do?"  
"I hope not." Alya grumbled.

She watched Ladybug doing her impressive acrobatic styled moves and wondered why she could do stuff like that in a supersuit and yet could barely walk in a straight line without it; she hoped to one day have powers like that.

When Ladybug ended up near them, Alya took her chance, making sure that they wouldn't get to 'Z' before Ladybug realized, "Go get them, Marinette."

Ladybug looked shocked and stumbled before she moved back to the fight.

Alya felt relieved to finally get that off of her chest, and she cursed her own stupidity as she remembered to turn on her phone's camera to record the fight, feeling a little thankful to not have not recorded her admittance.

She nudged her boyfriend to let him know that he should do the same to Cat Noir, so that Adrien doesn't make it to 'Plan Z' whatever that will be.

When Cat Noir came to the Xylophone to pull them to safety and Cataclysm it, Nino finally let the words out of his throat from Cat Noir's arms, "You can do it, my dude, Adrien."

Cat Noir sent Alya a worried glance, realizing that she could hear the words that Nino had spoken from his hold as well while he stumbled along after the shock of Nino's confession.

"Don't worry, I already knew." Alya sent a wink to him for good measure, glad that she'd had the decency to turn her phone off when Cat Noir drew near.

She barely kept any noise from leaking out of her throat when he stumbled again.

After the Akuma fight, Ladybug and Cat Noir came towards them where the Xylophone once stood to get their answers.

"How did you figure out my identity, Alya?" Ladybug demanded despite the fact that her timer and Cat Noir's were going down quite rapidly by this point.

"You're my best friend and my role model; I'm going to notice." Alya shrugged with a small smile, just relieved to finally get this out of the way.

"How did you and Nino figure out mine then?" Cat Noir asked, surprising Ladybug, and looking quite nervous despite himself.

"Well, Nino's my boyfriend and your best friend. We were bound to notice sometime, and besides that both of you were running off every time an Akuma fight happened no matter where we were." Alya shrugged, admitting the truth rather easily.

Ladybug looked surprised, and Alya began to silently count down the time left before they detransformed in her head.

"You know Cat Noir's identity too?" Ladybug asked with wide, shocked eyes; her mind probably abuzz with the flashbacks from the past few weeks or so.

"And Nino knows yours as well." Alya shrugged, pleasantly surprised by the look of realization on Cat Noir's face; either he was quicker than Marinette or Alya was far more subtle than Nino was.

"Does that mean-" Cat Noir began right as Alya's mental count hit zero and as Ladybug detransformed with an embarrassed flush to her face.

"Marinette!" Cat Noir practically cheered as Alya desperately tried to figure out how far his timer was from ending as well before it naturally came to a close within the next half a second to a second.

"Adrien?" Marinette muttered in surprise as she suddenly had an arm full of a model as he squeezed her tight in a new hug.

Alya giggled when Marinette first froze up before slowly relaxing into the embrace.

"Before you make good use of those broom closets I mentioned before, I'll go and take my leave. Bye, you two." She smiled as she tugged Nino away who shot her a half scandalous look.

"What all did you tell Marinette?" He squawked, and Alya only gave him a smug, content smile.

"Just what I needed to." She beamed; Plan X, Plan Xis, Plan whatever you wanted to call it at the very least worked.

Just please don't call it Plan Xylophone; they had no idea that the Akuma was going to be a musician before that was revealed.


	25. Yonder

In the distance, just further out of her sight, further away from where she stood on patrol, surveying the surrounding area, a man left his encased room for a fairly normal routine.

He rejoined those that lived or worked in his house as he moved about with the ease and grace of a man raised in this kind of life even though he wasn't, just had lived it for a while to make it much like clockwork to turn out for the night with a few last minute requirements and a few servants to send home, and he'd walk past his son's room without stopping, not aware that his son wasn't sound asleep this late at night.

Just out of sight, Hawkmoth was detransformed and turning in for the night; the idea of it unsettled Ladybug more than she'd ever care to admit.

Hawkmoth could be anyone and anywhere within reason near Paris; he could have a family, a wife, kids, and probably still had living parents and if his family was particularly blessed with good genes, living grandparents.

She sighed as her eyes caught the flash of lights coming to life in Parisian apartments as her heart sank under the thoughts that dropped on her from above like knives, thoughts and theories and heartache.

Ladybug shifted and caught her partner's eye; Cat Noir was everything that she felt like she was not as she slowly came to appreciate and worry more about him everyday.

She knew when a shift meant that he was to be serious, she understood now that his flirting was genuine, she'd realized that he came from a less than welcoming and loving family from accidental hints that he'd dropped and the way he reacted to a few different situations, and most importantly, she just knew him like he was some sort of extension from her body.

When Ladybug worried that she'd become too complacent as a superhero, his genuine concern and worry grounded her in the dangers of their job even as he believed in her wholeheartedly.

She couldn't ask for a better partner and though she hated to see him sacrifice himself for her time and time again, and whenever he did, she began to worry that she'd never get him back, she understood why he did it, time and time again.

Ladybug needed to stay around to purify the Akuma, she needed to remain strong in those moments, and yet with every passing day, she only wished that she could be the one to make those sacrifices in his place, because it began to hurt too, too much to see him do this for her time and time again.

She's worked with him for more than three years; the job takes more out of her than she realizes sometimes, and yet she couldn't ask for a better man, a better partner, to help her out when the going gets tough.

It just sucks to know that over the yonder, some mysterious man is turning in for the night, and may be turning the world upside down with a sort of ease that Ladybug both envies and hates.

* * *

Ladybug hates the resolution of who that man actually was over the yonder, who Hawkmoth hid behind as a civilian; he'd broken a part of her partner's heart that she worried she wouldn't be able to fix.

Standing here, watching people evaluate the mansion as if the living owner of it isn't here is unnerving to say the least, and to know that the yonder isn't the safe comfort of a mansion but rather a jail cell hurts more than she can believe, because when the veil is removed, the heart, mind, and soul see more than they bargained for.

Ladybug shifts, masking her heartache behind her own smile as she watches Adrien try not to cry as he tells them that he can't sell the house, not now at least.

It's the only home that he's really known, and as the people leave with a sluggish limp to themselves, she wonders how come they don't see the young man hurting and not just the profit.

"Yonder's so distant." Ladybug sighs as she sits on a bed that both makes her body want to melt into it and bolt away, "It feels different now, anyway."

"Yeah," Adrien mutters, and it sounds so bitter, "It's definitely different now."

"I wish that we never had to see him unmasked or that it didn't play out this way." Ladybug answers, leaning forward to take Adrien into her arms, "It's way worse than I'd imagined. I liked the Hawkmoth of my mind better, he was more distant, and couldn't put you through this kind of pain."

Adrien shrugs helplessly, "It's not like we could have prevented this. He knew what he was doing."

"I doubt he knew who he was hurting." Her gloved hands rub his back, nervous for not the first time that she's saying too much; her partner always brings out this freedom in her that she needs to temper down.

"It doesn't matter. It would have hurt me even if I wasn't Cat Noir. I'm not defending him in court, cat's honor. I can't stand as Cat Noir and defend Hawkmoth in the same breath or in the same lifetime." Adrien speaks up, letting a hint of his humor peek through, before flattening it in the next moment.

"He's not just Hawkmoth." Ladybug sighed, "I don't think that his actions are justified or that you should defend him, but we'll have to look at this from his perspective too and move forward the best we can." She wonders if this moment has aged her or whether she's just been slowly growing to this point all of her life.

"Ladybug," Adrien looked helpless again even though he always had a steely grit of determination beneath the passive layer at the top; a strong underlayer that grew more over the years of him being Cat Noir, "I can't look at my father and see just the man that I thought he was before. It's tainted with who he is now."

"I know," Ladybug took a deep breath, "But love has never been easy, and if you hold a grudge, it will only fester up." She frowned, thinking of the many times that she'd been holding grudges before being a hero reminded her of her duty to protect citizens and care for them no matter what, she'd only recently came to forgive Lila, but she already felt the stirrings of her life change for the better even though she still wasn't friends with her.

Ladybug was still working on forgiving Chloe for all of her misgivings even though she knew that she'd probably never get close to her or Lila, just forgive them for their faults, and move on with her life; ultimately, it pushed her farther than she'd ever imagined possible before.

Adrien stared past her as if he suddenly didn't see her anymore, just the wall behind her, "I know that."

Ladybug looped her arms around him, pulling him much tighter against her even though it really wasn't much added comfort.

"You can detransform, you know. Hawkmoth has been defeated, and no one else is nearby." Adrien mumbled into her shoulder, so she detransformed.

Her heart ached for him, and all that Ladybug, all that Marinette, wanted was for her partner to be happy again, to smile, and she knew that she'd try to support him through this massive trial past all of their fears and heartache.

Forgiveness isn't always easy or cut into stone, but Ladybug would try to forgive Hawkmoth for she knows that she couldn't help but feel defeated if she never forgave her partner's father and tried to move past this moment.

It just stung that that yonder was closer to her and Cat Noir's homes than she'd realized, that if she'd been where she normally is, even as a civilian, he'd been awfully close and doing the things that Cat Noir's dad always did.

Yonder really wasn't as far as she wished it was.


	26. Zilch

She counts the change up, balancing what she can of what they have; since they'd decided to make it on their own, things hadn't been particularly easy.

The blond haired woman glanced over towards her husband, whose back looked stiff from sitting, half hunched over for too long, and his clothes looked frayed though the passion that brewed beneath his eyes as he worked on a new design set her heart at peace.

She shifted, recounting the money, and still unsure of whether they could pay the bills this month and afford the material for her husband's designs, money to pay to enter some design competitions, or the fledgling business they'd just opened up.

The new Mrs. Agreste already felt that she'd have to throw in the towel and ask her mother for help again for this month though her husband hated when they did that; it felt too much like quitting, giving up, and her eyes flickered over to her husband as she bit back a wave of nausea and just stood and worried in their much too small kitchen that Gabriel filled up whenever he had to use it to make them dinner.

She'd tried cooking for them, but her meals were often less than desirable; she loved to experiment with baking, try out new recipes, but they never looked exactly like they were supposed to and often tasted just off, somehow.

Mrs. Agreste loved sweets for all of the years that she was denied them even though she knew with the long, hard hours of modeling that she did for her husband that she'd still have to watch what she eats somewhat.

"Hey, what are you designing?" She can't help but murmur and step closer, ignoring the slight click of her heels that she hadn't quite taken off yet, and peered down at a page coming to life with a beautiful, Springy dress, something that reminded her of cool days and even colder evenings, something that reminded her of comfort.

She loved Spring.

"A dress, a cocktail dress." He muttered, still a little too distracted to look up.

"I'll take you to the store later." She murmured back, eager to buy whatever he needed even though it wasn't always easy and usually wasn't easy in fact to afford whatever materials he needed for his designs and pay their bills.

"Do we have enough?" His tone was sharp, and she sighed, knowing that without a doubt that he'd be frustrated if she asked her parents for help again and yet knew that she didn't want to start letting them get into debt or struggle too much with paying the house payment.

"We'll cut back on electricity and start eating less food. We won't eat out anymore, and I'll stop trying to bake or cook for a while. We will save up enough to buy whatever you need for the next few competitions and work towards selling more of your designs." She smiled a wide smile, knowing that they were stretching money that was barely there or wasn't there at all.

She might need to pick up another job again, so that they'd have money to buy more fabric and whatever else he might need; she knew that they'd need it.

Mrs. Agreste definitely hadn't grown up with balancing and stretching money out, but she'd learned along the way now that she's older; she'd been slightly worried when her parents weren't at all happy that she'd started dating Gabriel, but the fact that they'd came to like him just well enough especially when he insisted on making a name for himself, not relying on their paycheck to do so.

She wondered as she starting organizing the remaining money into neat piles and started planning on how just to ask for money for taxes from her mom again without ticking off Gabriel right away.

Mrs. Agreste had no idea how she was going to tell her husband that she was pretty sure that she's pregnant and how they were going to afford to take care of a newborn baby when they could barely feed themselves, but she knows that she's willing to try and despite how hardworking Gabriel was that he'd love to have a child between them and that may be he'd let her parents help out on really tight with money days for their child's sake.


End file.
